The Earth-Shattering Summer
by Kennie Barton
Summary: "I had learned that any moment could be earth-shattering, any moment could be significant, anything could change everything." When the past came back to haunt my mother, I was literally thrown into a whole other world. Mafia Families, gang violence, and a nasty revelation adding another blow to a horrible summer. AU Shadowhunters, rated for language, ideals, and because I can.
1. Chapter 1

Summer is always rough at my house. Every year my mom goes off on some tangent about some insignificant thing. She packs up the house and moves upstate to her friend's farm until I have to go back to school. That's not an exaggeration either; for the last fifteen years, my mother has done this to me.

Sometimes I luck out. A few times my best friend spent the summer with us. Sometimes his mom came and took me to their home for a few days then brought me back. Sometimes Luke, my mom's friend, brings me back to the city to stay at his place for a few days too.

This time, I probably won't be that lucky.

Simon's band is reaching a highpoint on the internet. It's their fifteen minutes of fame, and they are literally loving it. They're not famous for their music though. Their music is awful. On top of that, their ever-changing name makes it impossible for them to develop a real following. The band is Youtube famous for their ridiculous "behind the scenes" videos. I mean, they were bound to get good videos of three teenage boys goofing off.

In light of this newly acquired fame, Simon's busy all summer. He won't be coming to the farm with me to help pass the time. I won't be able to come to see him, and my mom, for some reason, refuses to let me stay by myself. I'm almost sixteen, perfectly capable of looking after myself. I mean, it's not like I never took a self-defense class. And Simon's mom would totally let me crash on their couch for the summer.

"It's horrible Simon," I sighed slinking down in my desk at school. It was finals week, we had already finished our last final of sophomore year. I was counting the minutes until I walked through the door of our house and mom would tell me about the trip upstate.

"It might not happen this year," Simon offered shrugging. "Last year you were here for three whole weeks before she went up to Luke's farm."

I grunted in response, sliding further down in my desk so my head lay on the desk behind me.

"You know you can always stay at my place," Simon continued. "My mom doesn't mind, and Rebecca's not staying with us this summer. You could just use her room."

"As nice as that sounds, it won't work," I stared at the ceiling of the classroom, willing a solution for my problem to appear there. "Mom would never leave me here for the summer, even if it was with your family. She won't even let me stay with Luke for more than a few days, and he's basically her boyfriend."

"She's just trying to protect you," Simon agreed looking over his shoulder toward the clock mounted on the wall. He was checking to see how much longer we had before the final bell released us for the summer. "She is your mom."

"Are you making 'your mom' jokes over here Lewis?" Eric set himself down on my desk, pulling out his journal of rejected band names. "I thought Fray banned those from your conversations?"

"I banned you from our conversations actually," I pushed myself up into a sitting position, glaring at Eric.

"Psh," he smiled knowingly. "Anyway, I wanted to invite the two of you to my poetry reading at Java Jones this weekend."

"I thought you gave up on poetry," Simon frowned, accepting a flyer for the poetry reading from Eric. "It was really horrible, and not worth the trouble anyway."

"It's all a farce my friend, for our channel," Eric smiled shoving a flyer in my face.

"Do you even know what that word means, Eric?" I snatched the flyer from him hand, "the poetry reading is on Monday."

"I know most I used it correctly, it's in my piece for the reading," Eric replied smugly, pulling out another flyer and waving it in my face.

"Oh, getting big words in are you?"

"Come Fray, it's just a poetry reading," Eric protested as the bell finally rang, dismissing us for the summer.

"We'll come, Eric," Simon took the flyer Eric was still waving in my face. He shoved it in his backpack along with the one Eric had given him as he came to his feet. "Don't worry, we'll be there."

Simon caught my elbow as we joined the rush of students trying to get out of the building.

"I don't want to go to some dumb poetry reading, Simon," I frowned as we emerged in the bright sunlight of the late spring day. "My life is about to end, again. The last thing I want is to spend any of that time listening to Eric regurgitate words he googled for English papers."

"He probably won't even do anything. He just said it was for the band's Youtube channel," Simon shook his head. "It'll be something stupid."

"Even more reason for me not to go," I gave Simon a look.

"Come on, you could be in the video," Simon held his hands up in surrender. "The whole video could you be mocking his poetry, people love that!"

He had a point. Some of the band's most popular videos had me in the background, openly mocking Simon and the others. According to Matt, who posts the videos and keeps track of the promotional details, I have a pretty decent following.

"What if it's actually good though?" Simon laughed at that.

"Eric, have good poetry?" he chortled. "That's as likely as me dating Isabelle Lightwood."

"Right," I laughed in response. Fifteen minutes of fame or not, there was no way international supermodel, singer/songwriter, actress Isabelle Lightwood would have any interest in Simon. It was nothing against Simon; he just wasn't famous enough for someone born in the spotlight. And that is exactly was Isabelle, and her darling brother Alexander, were.

"So, if your mom's still in town will you come to the poetry reading? I really don't want to go alone."

"If mom hasn't hauled me to the farm for two months of isolation," I sighed, my shoulders falling in dejection. "But I highly doubt mom will wait that long to go to the farm."

* * *

When I got home from school my mom wasn't home yet. I dropped my backpack inside the door of the house and made a hasty retreat from the area. If my mom couldn't find me, she could hardly drag me off to the farm.

I didn't travel far though. I only made it to Java Jones, a local coffee shop. Simon thinks a lot like me, he had already laid claim to one of our favorite couches near the back. He also had two cups of coffee waiting for us.

"Fray!" he called loudly, waving frantically as I picked my way across the room to him. "I have the best news," he announced brightly as I sank in the chair.

"Doubtful, but carry on," I wrapped my hands around the coffee mug meant for me, and breathed in the sweet aroma of the freshly brewed drink.

"We changed the name of the band," Simon answered.

"Again?"

"Yes, again," Simon frowned mockingly at me. "It's a good one this time, I think it'll stick."

"Yeah? What is it now?"

"You're just going to say it's stupid," Simon responded, his smile broadening to a grin. "You always say it's stupid."

"And you always tell me anyway," I inhaled a deep breath of the coffee aroma before taking an appreciative sip. "So come on, just tell me so I can laugh and we can move on."

"What else do you have to do today?" Simon asked, picking up his own cup and taking a long drink from it. "I mean besides avoiding your mom."

I leaned back into the couch cushions, wrapping my fingers around the mug as I held the drink just below my chin. What else did I have to do? Very little in all honesty, but anything that kept me away from home kept me in the city longer. And away from complete isolation at the farm.

"I was thinking of going to the park," I answered at length. "Get some sketches of the runners, the fountains," I trailed off.

"The Lightwoods filming their newest movie?" Simon offered, cracking a huge knowing grin at me.

I laughed at the accusation. "More like watch the madness caused by the Lightwoods filming their new movie in the park," I corrected Simon, still laughing at the thought of me trailing like a lost puppy after Alexander Lightwood with his sweeping jet black hair and impossibly blue eyes. "I've always loved the chaos, it's entertaining."

"Is that why you ruin all Eric's videos with weirdness?" the third member of Eric's band leaned over the back of the couch. Matt was easily the most normal of the three people in the band, which I felt bad for not knowing the new name of.

"It's adding character to his mindless blathering," I turned a dark look up at Matt. "What are you doing here anyway? I thought you did things on Thursday afternoons?"

"It's summer, Fray," Matt rolled over the back of the couch taking up both of the remaining seats. "My Thursdays are free until August, maybe even longer."

"Besides, how can you expect him to function without coffee?" Eric came up behind us too, carrying four mugs of coffee. "Black, two creams and sugar, three sugars, black," Eric sat the respective mugs in front of their owners, "and I have an idea for a new video."

"To announce the new band name?" I suggested, finishing the coffee Simon had bought and picked up the one Eric had bought. "Or just to release another dumb video?"

Eric frowned thoughtfully at the question, looking at me with narrowed eyes. "None of our videos are dumb, Fray," Eric finally responded. "They're smart marketing tools to get our band out there, for people to hear us."

"Oh, look he learned a buzz phrase," I mocked him with a sly smile. "Marketing tools, where did you learn about that?"

"Ha," Eric barked with forced laughter. "But I do have a great idea for a new video."


	2. Chapter 2

There's a certain hype about poetry night at Java Jones. It draws in all sorts of people, and there's an unspoken code not to talk about it, almost like Fight Club. Which is why, generally speaking, no one records the events to post on youtube.

Eric had other ideas. His awesome new video idea included his piece from the poetry reading, and not much of anything else. I still wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but Simon had the camera, and I was between him and Eric.

I'll just go ahead and say it. I have a weakness. I can't help but mock Eric, about everything. It's an issue that has existed as long as our friendship, which is surprisingly healthy. I mock him, he mocks me, we have a good laugh and start the cycle over.

So when he stood up on that stage, spouting large words that he couldn't pronounce; and did not form sentences, I really couldn't stop myself. The whole video was me defining the words using Urban Dictionary, which is possibly the dictionary Eric used to find the gems he was using. It made a little more sense using Urban Dictionary, but not by much.

To add to the fun, Simon and Matt were defining the words out of Webster's. I don't think Eric fully approved, but it was funny to me. And most of the followers for the channel on youtube thought it was pretty funny too, but that was after the poetry night was over.

When Eric had said his piece, Simon went with Matt to talk to him about something. I fell back on our favorite couch to listen to the next person. I was not expecting anyone to sit next to me. I was expecting to be alone for at least a good ten minutes, while Eric watched the video and the band discussed it. But someone did sit down next to me.

He did more than that actually. This someone fell back on the couch with obvious familiarity. I was offered a cheap Styrofoam cup filled with steaming black coffee while this guy made himself comfortable. I looked at him sideways, holding the cup out away from me. Who was this guy, with his head full of golden hair and impossibly matching eyes? And what gave him the impression that it was okay to sit on my couch, while I was sitting there?

"Your friend's poetry is terrible," he said in way of greeting.

"What?" I asked, caught off guard.

"I said his poetry was terrible. It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random," he took a drink from his own Styrofoam cup of coffee.

I was almost too stunned to respond to that. It was true that that was most likely how Eric had devised his piece for the evening, but that didn't make it okay for this stranger to point it out. Especially to the face of the horrible poet's supposed friend.

"I don't care about Eric's poetry," I finally managed to respond to the entirely accurate description to Eric's literary disaster-piece. "Who are you and why are you here?"

"Jace," he offered his hand to me, smiling to reveal a chipped tooth to mar his otherwise perfect face. "And I wanted to meet you."

"Why?" I set the coffee on a side table and folded my arms over my chest defensively.

His smile grew a little, his head bobbed with laughter as he looked back to the stage, where some college beat-nick was performing. "I've seen your videos, on youtube. They're funny, Hodge thinks you're good. You have potential."

"Potential?" I echoed suspiciously.

Jace nodded, taking a long drink from his cup of coffee. "I don't see it, I just see blunt sarcasm; but that's my preferred source of humor," he shrugged, easily draping his arms along the back of the couch.

"Who's Hodge?"

"My agent," he answered; "From the Starkweather Talent Agency."

"That's the agency that works with the Lightwoods," I had thought that I recognized the name.

Hodge Starkweather was the agent working both Alexander and Isabelle Lightwood. And the Starkweather Agency worked with only the very best of the up-and-coming celebrities to make them long-term power houses. If Hodge Starkweather was this guy's agent, he was famous or very soon to be.

"Yea, that's why I'm in New York," Jace answered, tilting his head to one side as the guy performing on the stage started a long bongo tangent. "The Lightwood's new movie," he added as if I had no idea what the Lightwoods were doing in New York. I was hardly a fanatic, but I didn't live under a rock.

"Who are you? Really?" I asked again, my eyes narrowing further. "And don't say you're a talent scout for Starkweather Agency."

Jace frowned, shaking his head slowly. "I haven't got the head for that. Like I already said, I only appreciate blunt sarcasm. In fact, I like it so blunt, it's almost rude." His smile reappeared seconds later, as he pushed himself up off the couch, offering me a card with a flick of his wrist.

"What's this?" For some reason I accepted the card, looking up at Jace's golden eyes as I did so.

"Hodge is interested, that's his card," Jace answered. "And my number is on the back, if you're interested," he winked and vanished into the crowd, which had decided the beat-nick deserved a standing ovation.

I looked down at the card in my hand, running my fingers over the embossed lettering. Hodge Starkweather's business card, in my hands. Hodge Starkweather thought I had potential for something. I ran my fingers over the lettering as I turned the card over. In thin, slanted handwriting was a second phone number. Jace's phone number.

"What's that?" I jumped hearing Simon's voice so close. He had taken up the spot on the couch that Jace had vacated, holding the video camera and fresh coffee.

"It's nothing," I pocketed the card quickly, taking the camera from Simon as he settled back in the couch. I could tell he wanted to ask more questions. Simon and I had never kept secrets from one another, or hidden things like I literally just did. "So, what did Eric think of the vid?"

"Hates it," Simon answered watching the video over my shoulder. "He says I should delete it, he'll find another way to introduce the new name."

"What is the new name?" I asked for felt like the millionth time since summer break started. I had managed to convince mom not to leave by guilt-tripping her about Eric's poetry reading. Friendships are important, blah, blah, whatever. Mom didn't need to know that the poetry was a total joke. I literally was just after not being upstate at Luke's farm for as long as possible.

"I'm still not telling," Simon smiled. "You'll just make fun of it."

"Promise I won't," I tried again, closing the video camera, turning to look up at Simon. I hate being short, I always have to look up. "Are you really going to let me spend the whole summer at the farm wondering what the new name of the band is?"

"I might," Simon took the camera back from me, opening it and firing it up.

"What are you doing?"

"I want to film this, it's for the youtube channel," Simon grinned, holding the camera up and fixing the focus on me.

"What are you thinking of doing?"

"I'm going to tell you the name," he answered, as Eric took the stage again for an unnecessary encore.

"It's that bad?" I laughed as Eric began vomiting more words from the dictionary. "What did he do, pick out three big words and use it for a name?"

"Almost," Simon answered. "We're debating between Lawn Chair Crisis."

"That's god-awful!"

"And Sea Vegetable Conspiracy," Simon continued as if I hadn't spoken.

"You should go with Rock Solid Panda," I shook my head. "It's better than both of those!"

I was about to make another comment, returning to old band names that Eric and Matt had dismissed. But that was when my phone rang. I pulled it out groaning as I read the caller ID.

"It's my mom," I rolled my eyes, opening the phone to accept the call. "I'm still at the poetry reading."

"That's good." That was hardly the response I was expecting from my mom. She was strict, and I had already missed the insane early curfew she set so we could vanish into the wilds of upstate New York. "Clary, I want you to go to Simon's tonight. Stay there for the rest of the week."

"Why? I thought we were going to Luke's farm?"

"Something came up," that was a super vague answer that I never, ever got from my mom. "Don't try to call me, I'll call you when I can."

I frowned at my phone as it went dead. My mom never hung up on me, and also never just said things happened and not to call her. My mom had always been overbearing and needed to know where I was and what I was doing.

"That was weird," I put the phone away, and stood up as Eric was booed off the stage. "Ready to go?"

"Sure," Simon shrugged, shutting down the camera. "So who was the guy sitting with you earlier?"

"Just some guy, thought he knew me," I shrugged, throwing my messenger bag over my shoulder. "I feel like some Chinese take-out."

"I thought you had an early curfew?"

"I was released," I smiled as we hit the sidewalk, breathing in the New York night air. "So, take-out?"

"Sure," Simon grinned as we took off down the street.


	3. Chapter 3

I was stretched out beside Simon on the bed, listening to his deep even breathing. I had stayed over at Simon's hundreds of times, slept in the same bed as him just as many. We were as close as siblings, we acted like it too. He had fallen asleep right after we got home.

I was looking at the card Jace had given me at Java Jones. I was staring intently at the hand-written number on the back. Jace had given me his number, which meant he wanted me to call him.

The thing is, I knew better than to call a complete stranger who had given me his number. Jace could be anything, anyone, with who knew what kind of plan in store for me. I had watched enough bad crime dramas to know calling him was a horrible idea. I knew better than to call him, but I still really wanted too.

I turned the card over to look at the actual business card information. Hodge Starkweather, Talent Agent for the Starkweather Talent Agency. It listed his phone number, a personal mobile number. It would be awesome if this was actually Hodge Starkweather's number, if he really thought I had the potential to be a star.

But those kinds of things didn't happen, especially not to people like me. I was ordinary, barely scraping past five feet tall, with more freckles than should be allowed on a single person. I can't carry a tune in a bucket; I've never been much of a dancer either. Yeah, I'm artistic, but that didn't make anyone a star.

All I really had going for me were the youtube videos, in which I was overly sarcastic and mocking. People liked that sort of thing, clearly, since the internet ate it up. But that was not enough to interest a talent agent. Being a teenager was not a talent, every kid in the world did it.

I chewed on my lip, turning the card over again to look at Jace's number.

Texting him wasn't the same as calling him. There was a definitive difference between a text and a call. Everyone knows that. And since everyone knows that, it's obviously true.

 _For the record i think this is a horrible idea_

I waited for a response, staring at the caller ID on the outside of my phone. Maybe it wasn't his number. Maybe he was just playing me, with the fake business card with a scribbled number on the back. That was just as likely as him being some kind of predator. Which was as likely as Jace being a decent guy who really did know Hodge Starkweather.

Texting him had been a mistake. I realized it about five minutes after I texted him and received no response. It was a dangerous mistake; he would have my number now.

My phone buzzed while I still lamented my horrible decision making skills. It was from Jace's number: _For the record i completely disagree_

 _Whys that?_

 _Midnight texts are always the best_

 _Says who?_

 _Everyone. sleep deprivation is a wonderful thing_

 _What makes you think im sleep deprived?_

 _You drank to much coffee to sleep now_

 _You dont know how much coffee i drank_

 _Im going to guess at a lot we were in a coffee shop_

 _We were_

 _I saw you drink several cups before i offered you one_

 _Stalker much_ I laughed, covering my mouth with my hand. _How did you know it was me?_ I texted him again.

 _Hopefully ive made a lucky guess_

 _This is Clary right?_ I received the two texts almost instantly.

Simon took a deep breath and twisted on his side in the bed. I tensed, snapping the phone shut and turning to look at him. Had the vibrations from the text messages woke him up? Simon sighed, after a few minutes, settling down and pulling the blankets up under his chin.

I blew out a sigh and opened my phone up again:

 _And if its not?_

 _I retract my earlier statement this was a horrible idea_

I smiled, wishing I was alone in my own room at home so I could laugh aloud.

 _I dont remember telling you my name_

 _I said id been looking for you_

 _So you were serious about the hodge thing?_

 _I dont like talking business by text_

 _So you lied to me_

 _Id much rather see you to talk about it_

 _What if your a crazy childnapper, or a pimp_

 _Both of those are possible careers for someone like me but thats not the case._

 _How can I be sure_

 _I dont know about you but i could use some food stuffs_

 _Then you should eat_

 _I would love it if you joined me_

He sent an address afterward, to a little dinner near Luke's bookshop. I checked the time, it was closing in on two in the morning. It was possible the place would still be open, I had never heard of it but that didn't mean a whole lot. This was New York, restaurants came and went with the wind, just as easily missed as the tides.

I looked over at Simon again; he was drooling on the pillow. I wrinkled my nose, and looked at the address again. It wouldn't take too much time to get there. And it was a public place, so it would be less likely/slightly more difficult for him to abduct me, if those were his intentions.

Slowly I slipped out of the bed, pulling a pair of denim shorts on over my sleep shorts and a hoodie on over my tank-top. Silently I threw my bag over my shoulder and picked up my converse shoes and carried them out into the hall. I had never snuck out of Simon's before.

I had snuck over to Simon's, on numerous occasions. I felt a little bad about it. He was my best friend; we did everything together. And I was about to ditch him to go meet a stranger at some place I had never heard of. With my luck it would be a dive my mom would kill me for even thinking about going to.

Did that make me a bad friend? I like to think not. We do things without the other, I have friends besides Simon and the band. Simon has other friends too. And if I hadn't received the weird phone call from my mom, I would have been sneaking out of my own house.

Leaving Simon to his dream and drool was okay.

I pulled on my high tops in the living room, checked my phone one more time to see if I had missed a text, and headed out the door. I couldn't believe I was going to be that stupid, sneaking out in the middle of the night to meet a stranger. Every instinct was screaming to stop, but the offer was tempting.

And Jace was hot, like really, really hot. This one moment of bad judgment wouldn't be the end of the world. Teenagers had been sneaking out to meet people since forever. I was just being a typical teenaged kid, something my mother could have been proud of if she had been normal.

* * *

The place was called Taki's. It looked like a dump. The middle sagged gently like deflated pastries. The neon sign sputtered where it hung crookedly on the wall. A sign in the window boasted the best food around, which was doubtful since it appeared no one knew the place existed.

The interior was homey. There were booths lining the walls, and a few tables out on the open floor. It was warm and well lit; the lack of windows gave the distinct impression of a prison though. Mismatched crockery hung up behind the counter where a blonde waitress was talking with a burly man in a tight fitting flannel shirt. She waved that I could sit wherever I wanted and returned to her conversation.

I looked around again, hoping to find Jace. There were a few other patrons, the kind of people that would have given my mother a heart attack if she knew I had been talking to them. I had just about given up when I saw him sitting in a booth in the far corner of the restaurant. He stood up and waved me over.

"I was starting to think you weren't coming," he motioned me into the booth beside one of his companions. He fell back in his seat across from me.

"What's this?" the boy beside Jace demanded, looking between Jace and the girl beside me.

"It's a girl." Jace answered simply. "Surely you've seen girls before, Alec. Izzy's one, you know," Jace gave Alec a pleasant smile as he motioned to the person sitting beside me.

Alec returned the smile with a withering look. "Okay, jackass, who is she and why is she sitting here?"

"She's that girl from the youtube videos," the girl beside me answered, snapping her compact shut and tucking it away in her purse. "Jesus, Alec don't you pay attention to anything?"

Alec turned his look on Izzy.

"Don't give me that look," she returned shortly, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder as she leaned forward on her elbows. "Jace told us he invited her before we ever left."

"Wait a minute," I looked between Alec and Izzy, still unsure if I was actually suffering from sleep deprivation or not. It seemed like I was sitting at a table with the Lightwoods, but that wasn't possible. Famous people did not eat at prison-esque dinners at two in the morning.

I shook my head rapidly, trying to wake myself up a little more. Alec, Izzy and Jace all turned their attention toward me, clearly waiting for me to continue. I had to be imagining things, I just had to be.

"Are you the Lightwoods? As in _The Lightwoods_?" I finally asked.

"Aw, look," Izzy sighed wistfully, folding her hands under her chin and propping her head with them, "she's star struck."

"Great, another fangirl," Alec sighed, waving the waitress over. "Thanks a lot Jace."


	4. Chapter 4

"What'll it be guys?" the waitress asked with an air of familiarity. Almost as if these three were in there all the time, bothering her while she was trying to work. She looked bored, but that could have been because she was working an overnight shift.

"The usual," Alec answered, still casting a vicious look at Jace. "He'll just have water though, no matter what he says, Kaelie."

The waitress rolled her eyes, making a note on her order pad, "Iz?" she asked.

"The usual, please," Izzy smiled pleasantly, turning back to Alec. "Come Alec, you act like this is the first time Jace invited someone to our midnight snacks."

"Jace?" Kaelie asked, still scribbling Izzy's order on the pad. "Just water, or do you actually want something?"

"I'll have the usual, thanks," Jace held his hand up in Alec's face to stop him from complaining. "And she'll have the same as Izzy," Jace continued. "I would hate for you to have to find a menu at this late hour."

Kaelie actually smiled at that, her blue eyes coming up from the order pad to look at Jace. "Always the charmer, aren't you?"

"I've been told it's my best quality," Jace answered coolly, smiling mischievously at her.

"Clearly, most people have never met you then," Izzy muttered under her breath. "Come on Jace, I thought you said you had something important to tell us," Izzy continued after Kaelie walked away.

"Come on Iz, it's two in the morning," Jace countered, frowning as he inspected his glass of water. "I swear there are things in this."

"Jace, you did not drag me out of bed to listen to you contemplate the mysteries of New York water," Alec snapped. "And you never said you invited a fangirl to eat with us."

"She's not a fangirl," Jace set the glass down with a sharp click. "Hodge thinks she should join us."

"Doubtful," Alec grunted, folding his arms over his chest and sinking down in his seat.

"I don't know," Izzy sighed. "He's never pinned it on Hodge before." She cast me a sideways glance. "And I do recognize her from those videos."

"You watch the band's videos?" I finally managed to find something to say. I was sitting with the Lightwoods. I was talking about how they watch Eric's stupid videos on youtube. I had to have been dreaming. I had to still be crashed out at Simon's waiting for his mom to wake us up and tell us she made our favorite breakfast.

"The world watches those stupid videos," Izzy answered. "I first got the link from some friends in London, the day after, I got the link from a friend in Hong Kong."

"She's not the chick in the videos, Iz," Alec looked up at Izzy. "I watched those dumb videos. I felt my brain melting listening to that punk kid attempt to rap, and attempt singing. I had to actually stop the video when he started butchering those drums," Alec shook his head, trying to dismiss the memory of Eric attempting, and failing miserably, at playing the drums.

"I watched her make a video last night," Jace grinned as Kaelie returned with four plates of food. "Ah, yes. This is just what the doctor ordered."

"Sweet potato fries, fried peanut butter sandwiches;" she set a plate in front of Jace. "Philly cheese steak, steak cut fries;" a plate in front of Alec. "Two of the cook's specials," a plate was set in front of me.

It featured a thick soup, somewhere between a yellow and orange color, with bits of vegetables in it; a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and to finish it off there was a small dish of apple cobbler covered in ice cream and what looked like bear claw. I stared at the overfilled-plate with an open mouth. Izzy was going to eat all that? I couldn't eat all that, how could a scrawny stick like the girl beside me eat it?

"You guys need coffee?" Kaelie asked, brushing her hair back from her face. "Or will it just be water tonight?"

"No coffee, thanks, we have to be on set in a few hours," Izzy unwrapped her silverware from the napkin and started in on the soup.

"I'd love some coffee," Jace smiled up at Kaelie. "Clary would also like coffee."

I opened my mouth to protest, but that was it. If I was going to be up all night, I would defiantly need coffee. That didn't mean I needed Jace to order it for me.

"I can order my own coffee," I said after Kaelie had walked off again.

"I know," Jace responded distractedly as he turned to Alec. "Hodge told me to get her," Jace jammed his finger in the table between the two of them.

"I doubt Hodge told you to get her at two am," Alec retorted, clearly unfazed by Jace's attitude and starting in on his fries. "I actually doubt that Hodge wants anything to do with her."

"Have a little faith," Jace smiled, picking up half of a sandwich. "Hodge was busy last night, said I should bring her by in the morning."

"So what? You're going to keep her up all night, so she's grumpy when she meets Hodge?" Izzy asked, dunking her sandwich in the soup. "That's rude."

"We're teenagers Iz, we do all-nighters all the time," Jace spoke with a mouth full of food. "And she's a semi-normal one, all-nighters are easy for her."

That wasn't exactly true. I rarely pulled all-nighters, and when I did I generally crashed for a couple days afterwards to recover. I stayed up late all the time, and preferred to sleep it off most of the following day. Let's just say, I really liked sleep.

"Semi-normal or not, meeting Hodge is something that should be done with plenty of sleep." Alec had inhaled his sandwich and was finishing off his fries.

That was when Kaelie returned with the coffee for Jace and myself. She smiled as she set the mugs down and walked off again. "Jesus, she should just stay and talk to you, you overgrown child," Izzy sighed in exasperation, starting in on her apple cobbler and bear claw at the same time. "Or you could stop being a flirt," she cast an arched brow in Jace's direction.

"I could, but that takes all the fun out of life," Jace responded simply, pouring sugar in his coffee. "And Hodge has been working on Pacific time since he got in from L.A. two days ago, if we go after this, he'll still be wide awake."

Alec, and Izzy both pulled out their phones to check the time, seeing if Jace's theory was accurate. It seemed to check out with them, they didn't complain or call him out on it. We sat in silence for the rest of our stay in Taki's, accented with a few snarky comments between Jace and Alec. I managed to finish most of the cook's special, I couldn't get all the through the cobbler or touch the bear claw. Jace took care of that for me, and then we filed out of the dinner with a wave to Kaelie.

"I hate the schedule this week," Izzy commented as we walked down the street, stretching her arms over her head. Apparently we weren't too far away from where they were staying while shooting their movie, there was no need to hail a cab or call for a car. "All these early mornings, and the late nights… I need beauty sleep if I'm going to stay this good looking."

Alec snorted in his hand, and side stepped away from Izzy. "You didn't have to come eat," Alec laughed as they continued down the street. "And no amount of sleep is going to help that face," he ducked under Izzy's arm. "I thought you actually paid attention in training," he laughed.

"Cut it out, Alec," Jace laughed as Alec bumped into him. He caught the dark haired boy around the shoulders and held him close. "If she wanted to hit you, she'd deck you."

"She wouldn't," Alec pushed Jace away from him. "And she couldn't anyway. We've had the same training for the movie."

Jace made some comment, I can't remember what it was exactly because he was cracking up the whole time he said it. Izzy laughed at it, Alec also laughed but it was forced. The three of them seemed close.

I didn't know or understand the relationship between the Lightwoods and Jace. I had never heard of Jace, it was like he didn't exist outside of the little bubble I was in. The media had nothing on him, I had checked the list of Hodge Starweather's clients after we got to Simon's that night. There was no Jace mentioned, there was no Jace anywhere affiliated with the Lightwoods.

But the three of them acted close, like siblings. Like me and Simon. There was an easy laid back affection, not pressured by being famous. And I was witnessing it. Whatever the relationship, it was natural.

* * *

I was expecting a hotel. I was expecting a penthouse suite that they had trashed like the media always reported the hotel rooms of celebrities to be. Maybe I wasn't entirely sure what I had expected, it was the first time I had been in the home-like space of celebrities.

But I do know I hadn't expected a house. I hadn't expected a walled in garden filled with flowers that were perfectly manicured. I hadn't expected something so normal.

"Home sweet home," Jace sighed, falling back from Alec and Izzy to walk beside me.

"This is where you guys are staying?" I asked looking up at the three story building. There was a light burning on the top floor, it must have been Hodge still hard at work.

"No, this is home," Jace answered motioning to the name plate beside the front door. It read LIGHTWOOD in an ornate script. "Home sweet home."

"I didn't realize they lived in New York," I murmured following Alec and Izzy through the door. Jace followed me in, silently closing the door behind him.

"We were raised in New York," Izzy peeled her thigh length boots off. All three of them were looking around as if expecting someone to appear and berate them for being out so late. "This is the house we grew up in," she dropped her boots beside the door.

I looked around the room in awe, it was just a small foyer, but they had grown up in a house with a foyer. I had always thought the Lightwoods made their money as actor/singer/whatever else they did. None to the E!News reports said they had come from money, none of their interviews talked about coming from money. Then again, there was not a lot about their past anywhere. But that's making me sound a bit like a fangirl, which I'm not.

"Are you just going to lurk in the doorway?" I snapped my attention from the grandness of the entryway to where Jace and Izzy were leaning over the railing of the grand spiraling staircase leading up to the second floor.

"I'm coming," I kicked my shoes off, since everyone else had done the same, and took off after Jace and the Lightwoods into the depths of their New York home.


	5. Chapter 5

A blue Persian cat was sitting on the landing for the second floor, eyeing me suspiciously. Jace and Izzy were standing on either side of the cat, frowning down at it. Jace folded his arms over his chest and shifted on his feet.

It was then that I saw why they were glaring at the cat. He was sitting on top of a leather jacket. He had also spit up on said jacket. I could only imagine that Jace and Izzy were glaring because the jacket belonged to one of them. But they still weren't sure whose jacket it was.

"Church, I'm willing to forgive this, this transgression," Izzy starting, squatting down beside the cat to move him. "But only if you take us to Hodge."

Church mewed angrily as he was removed from the jacket.

"Don't be so nice to him Izzy. If he got this jacket out, who knows what else he got his claws into while we were gone," Jace commented sourly.

"I told him I'd forgive him," Izzy scratched the cat behind the ears, talking in a silly baby voice. "And if he knows I lied, he'll just do it again."

"You told him that yesterday, Iz," Alec appeared in the hall from one of the side rooms. "He barfed, and shredded your new leather from Milan, Jace's new Air Jordan's,"

"My what?" Jace shot down the hall, running to check the condition of his Air Jordan's.

"He's a menace," Alec finished holding up a sweater, which had probably been shredded while we were at Taki's. "And you coddling him is only making it worse," he turned a look on Izzy.

"Don't listen to them, Church. I know you're a good kitty," Izzy cooed stroking Church all the way down his spine. Church looked both pleased at the attention and annoyed by it at the same time. "Only a good kitty would take us to Hodge."

Church growled and sauntered over to the stairs leading up to the next floor, his tail held high. Izzy smiled as she stood up, "Come on Jace, we're going to find Hodge." Jace appeared from the room he had entered, holding a ratted pair of Air Jordan's. The shoes had also been puked on, and gave off a stench.

"I just bought these," he lamented trailing after Izzy and the cat toward the next floor.

"You should go," Alec motioned after them with his sweater. "I would go with you, but I need some sleep before I die on set tomorrow."

"Your character dies?" I asked before starting up the stairs. I had heard little about the details of the Lightwood's new movie, again, I'm not a fanatic. But I felt the death of a main character would have been in the top of the spoiler boards all over the internet.

"For a few scenes," Alec dismissed the question aside with a shake of his head. "It's complicated, just go." I watched Alec as he retreated down the hall, back toward his room.

Once his door had shut I turned and took off up the stairs.

The landing on the third floor lacked the personal touches of the second floor. It was clear that this space was more professional, cleaner and less used than the rest of the house. Church was sitting outside of a door on the back side of the house. Meaning the light I had seen outside was not the light Hodge was working by.

Jace and Izzy had already entered the room. I tip-toed over to the cat and pushed the door open slowly. The room took up around half of that side of the hall, and was full of book shelves. Display cases stood between the cases, proudly showing off trophies and awards.

There was a large open fire place at one end. Beside the fireplace was a large mahogany desk, the likeness of angels were carved at the corners holding up the desk's top.

Jace leaned against the desk, still looking mourningly upon his destroyed Air Jordan's. Izzy was in a wing-backed arm chair near the empty fireplace, her long legs crossed as she examined her nails. Behind the desk was a man in a tweed suit, with graying black hair slightly disheveled, like he had scrubbed his fingers through it while working. His glasses had slid partially down his long beak-like nose while he bent over his desk.

It was Hodge Starkweather. I recognized him from the interviews they played on E!News and his few appearances at red carpet events for his clients. And I never thought I would be standing in front of him, in the middle of the night, while he appeared to be taking a nap.

"I thought Church liked me," Jace was saying, holding his shoes up for Izzy's inspection. "I mean, I'm nice to him. I give him treats, even when Alec says I shouldn't. I even intentionally use fleece blankets in the middle of summer so he's more comfortable sleeping on my bed."

"He's a cat Jace," Izzy arched her brow as she looked over her nails at Jace. "They're fickle."

"But, I didn't do anything to warrant this," Jace sighed, lowering his shoes back to his lap.

"Stop crying, they're shoes," Izzy sighed, returning her attention to her nails. "You can just buy another pair tomorrow."

"Um," I started across the room for the desk, trying not to disturb the man, and not really wanting to interrupt Jace and Izzy's conversation. "Is he asleep?"

Jace looked up from his shoes, a small grin spreading across his golden features. "No, he's," Jace started, looking back at Hodge Starkweather, trying to find a term to describe what Hodge was doing.

"Dozing," Izzy supplied, kicking the front of the desk. "He doesn't sleep ever, just power naps when he thinks no one will bother him."

"Which is never, he'd be better off just sleeping in his bed for a few hours," Jace's shoulders bobbed as he laughed.

"Hodge," Izzy kicked the desk again, "we brought a visitor."

Hodge jerked upright, adjusting his glasses as looked around the room. "Jace, Isabelle, I thought you were going to Taki's," he sputtered, trying to look awake.

"We're back. And we brought someone to meet you," Jace dropped his shoes on the hardwood floor and turned to look at Hodge, folding his arms over his chest.

"I told you two, I'm not taking on new clients. Regardless of how pretty she is," Hodge gave Jace a look, clearly indicating that Jace had done that before. "Or he," Hodge turned his look on Izzy.

"You sent me to get her," Jace motioned to me with a dismissive gesture. "The girl from those videos we were watching on set this morning."

Hodge turned from Izzy back to Jace, and then at me. "Well I'll be damned," he whispered, taking his glasses off.

"You must be, to be so blind at thirty-six," Izzy scoffed rolling her eyes.

"Tell me, Clary right?" I nodded, "What is your mother's name?"

"My mother?" I looked over at Jace, who seemed just as confused as I was by the question.

"Yes, your mother. What's her name?"

"Jocelyn," I answered slowly. "Jocelyn Fray."

"Her maiden name, was it Fairchild?" Hodge asked.

"I don't think so," I answered. Mom had never talked about her life before, except to tell me that my father was military, and killed in a car-crash a few months before I was born. She never talked about her parents with me, I didn't know their names. I had always guessed she hated her parents, or they were dead. It was the same with my father's parents.

"Are you sure?"

"Why does it matter?" Izzy sat up in her chair, leaning forward. "I thought you wanted her because she's talented, or something like that. What does her mother have to do with this?"

"Yea Hodge," Jace turned a curious look at me, as if trying to see what had made Hodge so interested in my mother. "What does her mom have to do with anything?"

"I'm sure it's just a coincidence," Hodge shook his head. "But when I was in school, I knew a Jocelyn. And you, my dear, look surprisingly like her."

"Is that why you wanted to see her?" Jace seemed a little hurt that Hodge had wanted to meet me because of my mother, not the supposed talent I possessed.

"No, I hadn't realized until just now that she looked like Jocelyn," Hodge shook his head again. "And I'm sure that it wouldn't be the same person. My old friend is dead, along with her husband."

"Dead?" Jace asked turning back to face Hodge. "And for some reason you thought Clary was related to her?"

"The resemblance is uncanny," Hodge answered putting his glasses back on and giving a decisive shake of his head.

"How'd they die?" Izzy asked.

"The official report was gang violence," Hodge pulled his glasses off again, looking off in the distance. "But we all had our suspicions."

"That what?" I asked, taking a shuffled step back from the desk and Hodge.

"That Valentine, her husband and a close friend of mine, killed her and himself to escape the police."

"They were running from the police?"

"Yes, for connections with the Circle," Hodge answered.

"The Circle," Izzy and Jace asked at the same time, their faces turned in confusion. "What's the Circle?" Izzy continued, her mouth twisted in a frown. "It sounds like a cult or something."

"It was a cult of sorts, back, oh nearly twenty years ago," Hodge's focus seemed to come back from wherever it had been. He looked at me again, "Valentine founded the Circle when we were still in school. There were quite a few of us, Valentine and Jocelyn. Luke Graymark and his sister Amatis, Stephen Herondale, Celine Montclaire, Michael Wayland, Robert Lightwood and his girlfriend Maryse Trueblood... But that's getting into old history," Hodge sighed. "It's not something that we talk about anymore."


	6. Chapter 6

Jace's jaw dropped at the announcement. Izzy's eyes widened briefly in shock, as she in haled sharply. I felt my stomach drop, for reasons I didn't understand. Of all the things Hodge could have said, it seemed that no one had expected that.

I wouldn't learn until later why Jace and Izzy looked so surprised at the list of people that Hodge had named. It wouldn't be until later that I learned what the Circle really was and what being part of it meant. At the time I only knew that whatever the Circle was, it was like a cult and it was possible my mother was part of it.

"But like I said that is ancient history, and as a historian, I would know that." Hodge laughed at his joke, if it was even a joke. He stood up and stepped around the desk toward me. "It's a pleasure to meet you," he offered his hand to me with a smile.

"Like wise," I responded quietly taking his hand.

"Now, then. Jace, Isabelle, could you give us a few minutes? I'd like to speak to Clary alone." Jace and Izzy exchanged looks briefly. "It's alright, I just need to talk with her."

Slowly Jace slid off the desk and bent down to retrieve his shoes. He was giving Hodge a strange look as he did so, but said nothing. I could tell he wanted to, I wanted him to just so I wouldn't be left alone with Hodge, who had apparently been part of a gang. People never left gangs though, so if he had been before Hodge was still in a gang.

Izzy sighed heavily. "Whatever, come on Jace. You can run lines with me," she started across the room, half dragging Jace behind her.

"But, Iz," I heard Jace protest as the door clicked shut, separating them from me.

"So, tell me. Are you interested in the lime-light?" Hodge settled behind his desk, straightening up some of the papers he had been looking over before his impromptu nap. "Interested in a life of fame and glory that will only last a few years, at best?" he motioned to the chair that Izzy had just vacated with a wave of his hand.

I sank slowly in the chair, uncertain if I wanted that.

"I can give you a contract to sign, and with your parents' consent, I can give you a life like that. But it is hardly all it's cracked up to be. You can ask Alexander, Jace, and Isabelle, they'll tell you as much."

"Why are you telling me this? Jace told me you wanted to meet me," I finally spoke when Hodge looked over the tops of his glasses at me.

"I like to make sure my clients know what they're getting into," Hodge answered resting his elbows on the desk and lacing his fingers together under his nose. "This is serious, Clary. You sign the contract; you sign up for everything that goes with it."

"What else would go with it?"

"Any number of things," Hodge answered. "I will make decisions I feel are in your best interests, you will have to make sacrifices. You may have to stop the videos with those boys on the internet, you may have to move across the country for the sake of a career, possibly even the world."

"And if I don't sign the contract?" All of that, only if I signed the contract. For a few years, at best. And then what? What would I do after that? Very few celebrities lasted more than five years, and I left I wouldn't be one of them.

"I won't be your agent, none of this will be valid, and you can go home and pretend none of this happened," he answered simply.

"Do you want me to not sign a contract?" I asked him slowly. It seemed odd that a talent agent was trying to persuade a prospect against signing a contract. Was none of it real? Had Jace just made everything up, and Hodge was so used to it he just played along?

"I want you to keep your options open, Clary." He pulled a contract out of his desk.

"What other options are there?"

Hodge smiled, "I'm glad you asked that."

Option one: sign Hodge's binding contract for a three-year stint in which I become famous and he takes a percentage of my earnings. Basically lose my life to go to Hollywood where I would easily be cast in one of hundreds of roles, setting me on the fast track to stardom.

Option two: keep posting videos on youtube with Simon and the guys. Create my own channel and make a name for myself. Once people started calling me, asking me to be in their projects, contact Hodge and sign him as an agent for a set rate rather than a percentage.

Option three: hang out with the Lightwoods and Jace. Become famous by association, and manage the insanity on my own. Ultimately I could still sign Hodge as my agent, but once again it would be a set rate rather than a percentage because I would already be famous. Hodge believed that I could do that, it seemed to him that Jace wouldn't complain about me tagging along, and Alec would simply get over it.

Naturally I countered that I was already famous, I was stilling in the middle of my "fifteen minutes of fame" thanks to the internet. I already had a following, it wouldn't take a lot for me to make the jump to something else.

He was ready for that though. It was just a phase, which is a real thing. I remember watching crazy stuff on youtube, stuff that was all anyone would talk about all day long; now no one can even remember what it was. It was a very real possibility that in a few week's no one would remember me or Eric and the guys in the band. No more following, no more fame, and more work for Hodge and his team.

I told Hodge I would think about it, and excused myself from the library/study/office. Jace was in the hall taunting Church with one of the laces from his ruined shoes. He laughed watching Church leap after the end of the lace.

"Stupid cat," he taunted, jerking the lace away from the cat. "How do you like that? Huh?"

"It looks like he likes it," I offered, looking down at Jace and Church.

"He probably does," Jace conceited standing up. "But if I'm actually mean to him; he'll do worse than barf and destroy a brand new pair of limited edition Air Jordan's." Jace cast another glare at the cat before dropping the shoe lace. "So what did Hodge say?"

"Have you just been sitting out here to hear if I signed with Hodge?" I arched my brow at Jace.

"No, of course not," Jace gave a nervous laugh as we started for the stairs back down to the ground floor. "I was just making sure you didn't get lost on your way back to the front door."

"Do people often get lost in the Lightwood house?"

"You would be surprised," Jace looked at me from the corner of his eye. "It's a pretty big house."

I snorted, rolling my eyes as we reached the second floor. "It has three stories, and the stairs come out by the front door."

"That's true, mostly," Jace answered cryptically.

"Mostly?" I echoed as we started down the stairs for the ground floor. "How is it mostly true?"

"There are four floors," Jace held up four fingers. "A studio in the basement; the ground floor; rooms for the family, guest rooms, and the music studio on the second floor, and the offices, library, and classroom on the third floor." He ticked the floors off as he talked about them.

"Classroom?"

"We're home schooled. Well, Alec's not, he graduated a few weeks ago," Jace frowned at that. "I think he was the only one anyway. We all took the finals."

"Never mind," I shook my head, dismissing how what I had said was mostly true. "So, how do you know the Lightwoods? I mean, I don't want to sound stalkerish, but I've never heard of you."

"You've heard of me," Jace laughed as we reached the bottom of the stairs. "I just don't go by Jace professionally."

I frowned at him. That was possibly the dumbest reasoning I had ever heard. And even if he wasn't professionally known as Jace, I would have recognized him. I had recognized Alec and Izzy; I could do the same with Jace.

"I'm Jace Wayland," he offered his hand to me, turning backwards as we walked down a narrow hall we had not used earlier that night. "Professionally I'm the third Lightwood, Jonathan."

"Jonathan Lightwood?" My frown deepened, and not just because I was becoming lost in the Lightwood house. "I've never heard of a Jonathan Lightwood."

"No, I doubt you would have," I turned to see Alec stalking us down the hall, pulling on a zip-up jacket. "Jonathan Lightwood is a protégé pianist."

"Pianist?" I snorted, covering my mouth with my hand. "Seriously?"

"I'm quite good," Jace puffed out his chest and raised his chin. "And where are you off to?" he directed his question at Alec.

"The set, there's been a revelation," Alec answered shaking his head roughly, his hair shaking off water droplets. He must have taken a shower while I was talking to Hodge in the office/library.

"At three in the morning?" Jace asked, stepping aside so Alec could slide past him in the hallway. "Who's still awake enough for an epiphany now?"

"You are," Alec answered gruffly. "Izzy's in the middle of one down in the studio, and apparently our writer is too."

"Do you need someone to go with you?"

"No," Alec shook his head again. "Someone responsible needs to stick around and make sure Izzy makes it to the set in a few hours."

"And you're trusting me?" Jace laughed. Alec shot him a look. "Fine, fine. I'll stay up all night to make sure Izzy gets to set on time."

"Thanks," Alec gave Jace another look I couldn't read, cast a look at me, then shook his head and took off down the hall again. "I'll see you and Izzy in a few hours."

"I didn't want to sleep tonight anyway," Jace muttered quietly as Alec disappeared down the dark hallway.

"You couldn't sleep anyway," I responded.

Jace frowned, turning to look at me. "What?"

"You've drank too much coffee to sleep," I answered shrugging. "You said so yourself."

"I did?" he asked, still confused. "When did I say that?"

"Earlier, before we went to Taki's, you said you'd drank too much coffee to sleep, and you were hungry."

"I am hungry," Jace commented, absently rubbing his hand over his stomach. "I could use some take-out."

"We just ate," I laughed.

"And I'm still hungry," Jace commented. "Being a professional stunt-man does that to a person. My metabolism is impossibly fast."

"Dude, too much."


	7. Chapter 7

I not sure how it happened, but I know it was a crash. I'm not sure when it happened, but I do know that I fell asleep somewhere besides where I woke up. I'm also not entirely sure why my phone was playing piano music for an alarm tone.

When I woke up to the piano music I was in a large four-poster bed, with a heavy comforter tucked up around me. My phone was plugged in on a bedside table beside a small glass of water. It was still dark outside, without any hint of a sunrise.

It took me maybe three seconds to realize I was in a guest bed at the Lightwood house. And that I had fallen asleep while hanging out with Jace. My face went red and burned. Jace was impossibly cute, and I had crashed out while talking to him. I shouldn't be allowed to interact with hot guys if that was all I was going to do.

I tore the comforter aside and stood up reaching for my phone. The piano music was still playing, either it was a really long song or my phone was recently possessed. I pulled the phone free of the charger just as the music stopped.

The alarm was labeled, **TO THE SET!** Jace must have set it for me when he plugged in the phone. I frowned at the alarm name. Was this a not-so-subtle way of inviting me to go to the set with Jace, Alec, and Izzy? That had to be it, celebrities would not let recently acquainted people run free in their homes while they were away.

I pocketed the phone and started for the door. And almost screamed when I opened it.

Jace was standing there, freshly showered, judging by the dampness of his hair and the way his shirt clung to his shoulders and chest. His hand was raised, like he was about to knock. He smiled seeing me and fell against the side of the frame dropping his hands in his pockets.

"Sleeping beauty," he offered in way of greeting. "I hope you slept well."

"Did you do something to my phone?" I asked, pulling the phone from my pocket and holding it up to his face.

"I charged it for you," he answered stepping aside so that I could exit the room. "I also set the alarm so that you would be up so that we have enough time to get breakfast before we have to be on set for training." He gave a cheesy grin.

"He's considerate that way." Izzy was coming down the hall, dressed in sweats and a tight fitting shirt, tying her hair up as she walked. "Though never when it comes to cooking at home."

"If Maryse is cooking I'm not against it," Jace countered not even turning to look back at Izzy. "And if you would learn to cook from her, I wouldn't be against your cooking either."

"Mom taught me to cook," Izzy defended herself instantly, coming even with me and Jace. She slapped Jace's shoulder for his rude comment. "I can't help it that you only eat greasy fast-food, take-out, and whatever it is you and Alec love so much at that Nigerian restaurant."

"We also love Mongolian grill, and are not against Hibachi," Jace offered in response. "But the thing about that, against your cooking, is that a skilled person is cooking it." He shot down the hall before Izzy could hit him again. "Now come on, Alec is meeting us at Taki's for breakfast."

"Jace, I swear," Izzy growled watching him. "One of these days I'm not going to be so nice," she continued.

"Is he?" I asked, motioning after Jace.

"Annoying? Yes," Izzy started down the hall away, pulling me along with her. "And I'm glad you decided to sign with Hodge. I could use another girl, it's so hard to be feminine with Jace and Alec as my main crew."

"I haven't signed with Hodge."

"But you're thinking about it," Izzy gave me a charismatic smile, her arm settling comfortably in the crook of mine. "I mean you must be if you're still here."

"Yeah," I trailed off. Was I still around because I might sign with Hodge, or if it was because of Jace? And if it was because of Jace, was it that he didn't let me leave, or because I never said I wanted to go?

"Unless, you and Jace are talking," Izzy continued mildly, a knowing smile appearing on her lips.

"I just met him yesterday," I balked, but not far since Izzy had a firm grip on my arm. "And besides," I trailed off again.

Izzy laughed, bright and cheerful, shaking her head. "Jace isn't mine," she looked at me with amusement. "He's like my brother, he's just as annoying anyway," she frowned, but her eyes were still smiling.

"But I thought?"

"Believe me, I would never date Jace, or consider it," she shuddered comically. "He's lived here too long for that."

I smiled at Izzy, she smiled back. Apparently she was giving me a blessing to go ahead and "talk" to Jace. Or maybe she just wanted me around so that there was another girl. Either way, she wasn't mad that I had stayed all night, just like she hadn't been mad when I showed up at Taki's the night before.

"Now come on, if we're late Alec will have a cow." Izzy's pace quickened as she pulled me down the hall, toward the vaguely familiar steps I had climbed earlier to reach the third floor of the house.

* * *

I lost track of time. It's not usual for me. I get wrapped up in something and suddenly it's six hours later and mom is telling to go to bed so I can get up the next morning.

So of course I lost track of time while dying in the morning training session with the Lightwoods and Jace, watching Alec practice dying before they shot the scene, and laughing at Jace while he was receiving temporary tattoos for the movie beside Alec. But to be honest, anyone would forget to check the time with all that going on. The second my phone started ringing though, I knew exactly who it was, and exactly what they wanted.

"Are you serious? You snuck out of my house?! My house!?" Simon shout-whispered, I knew it was so he didn't alert his mom that I was gone. My mom had left me in her care, she took that very seriously. Simon's mom could ground me just as easily as my own mother or Luke. "My mom is going to flip when she comes in here and you're not."

"I'm sorry Si," I turned away from Jace and Alec, who were cracking jokes in make-up. Jace seemed a little concerned as I turned away, his smile fell. "I wasn't expecting to be gone all night."

"You snuck out, what am I supposed to tell mom?"

I winced at the question. I didn't really have an answer to that. I hadn't expected to be out all night. It was actually the first time I had been out all night with someone besides Simon. And the first time I had done something like that without either mine or Simon's mom knowing about it.

"Clary?" he hissed when I didn't immediately respond.

"I don't know," I turned briefly back to Jace and Alec, they had stopped talking. Jace was trying really hard to look like he wasn't watching me. "Do you think you can cover me until I get there?"

"How far away are you?" He would try. God, Simon would try to stall as long as possible.

"Thirty minutes," I checked the time on the clock over the door. I would just be slipping in when Simon's mom came to tell us breakfast was ready. If I managed to get there in fifteen minutes. "I'll try for twenty."

"Fray," Simon groaned. "You had better be here."

"I'm already on my way," I hung up before Simon could say anything else, turning back to Jace and Alec. "I have to go."

"But we were just about to start shooting," Jace protested, pushing the make-up artist away so he could stand up.

"Let her go Jace," Alec remained seated, looking somewhat annoyed as the tattoos of Jem Carstairs, one of the main characters of the new movie, were applied to his arms and chest. "We're not supposed to have guests on set anyway."

"But you were so excited about it," Jace decidedly ignored Alec's comment. "And we're shooting the big final battle today. And Jem's death."

"I know," I had been excited about watching them film. I had been excited to watch the movie magic before they added in the CGI effects and cut parts for time restraints. "But I really have to go."

"What's wrong?" Jace's brow furrowed looking down at me. "Who was on the phone?"

"It was Simon. I have to go."

"He's your brother?"

"If I don't get back, I'll be murdered, literally," I continued as if Jace had not spoken. "He's already mad I wasn't there this morning."

"Well, okay," Jace sighed, running his fingers through his hair. "Do you need a car or something?"

I shook my head, "no, I've got it." I turned to leave, grabbing my bag and threw it over my shoulder as I did.

"I'll see you later then?" He called after me.

"Yea," I answered closing the door behind me.


	8. Chapter 8

I did not get to Simon's before his mom left for work.

I did not get anywhere close to Simon's house before his mom left for work.

I did however receive a very angry phone call from Simon's mom, threatening all the physical hurt she could give me, a long lecture when she got home that night, a phone call to my mother, and the promise of being grounded indefinitely.

I knew she would hold up her end of those threats. Like I've already said, Simon's mom has the authority to ground me. Since me and Simon have been friends for so long, Elaine Lewis is basically my mom too, and has permission from my mom for physical punishments when warranted. My mom trusts Elaine more than she trusts me; I would say it's same on the reverse. I wasn't sure about the call to my mom, but I knew she would try.

Simon was in the living room when I crept through the door, still on the phone with his mom. He looked pissed, and had most likely received a run-down like the one I was in the middle of receiving. I gave an apologetic smile and shrug as I closed the door as quietly as I could.

"And if you are not in that house when I get home this afternoon, I will have your head on a platter Clarissa Fray. And your mother will hear about this, I promise you."

"Yes, ma'm."

Elaine hung up the phone. I leaned back on the door, closing my eyes as I sighed. I wasn't mentally prepared for Simon's anger, especially when he found out where I had been all night. If he was pissed about me leaving, he'd been more so when he learned that I had left to hang out with the Lightwoods and their kinda brother.

"I'm sorry," I pushed myself away from the door before Simon could say anything. "I'm sorry I left last night and didn't tell you. I'm sorry I was out all night. I'm sorry I got you in trouble."

"You think that's why I'm mad?" he asked, quickly coming to his feet. "You think I'm mad because I'm in trouble over this?" Simon brushed his hair back from his face, turning away from me as he exhaled loudly. "Clary, I woke up this morning and you were gone. You didn't even text me," he turned back to me.

"I'm sorry."

"God, Clary, I don't care that you're sorry. Where the hell were you?"

I fell back on the couch, covering my face with my hands as I did so. "I was at the Lightwood house," I mumbled quietly into my hands.

"You were where?" Simon asked disbelieving.

"With the Lightwoods," I answered, refusing to look up at Simon. "I was with Izzy and Alec Lightwood, and Jace Wayland at the Lightwoods house."

"Do you really think I'm stupid, Clary?" Simon retorted, shaking his head. "You don't know the Lightwoods, and you certainly don't know them well enough to use nick-names like those," he took his glasses off, rubbing his face roughly with his free hand. "What the hell Clary?"

"That guy, from Java Jones last night, he lives with the Lightwoods."

"And you thought it was a good idea to go see them in the middle of the night?" he half shouted at me. "I thought you were smarter than that."

I honestly thought that too.

I thought I was smarter than to meet a stranger in the middle of the night. I thought I was smart enough to stay home and meet people at more reasonable hours with other people around. I had believed I was smarter than going to a stranger's house and unintentionally staying the night. And I had hoped that I would have been smart enough to tell someone I knew where I was in case something bad happened.

Clearly I was not.

"Did they give you anything? Do you feel alright? Can you remember what happened?"

Apart from the part where I crashed and woke up in a guest room, yes I remembered everything. But I had the feeling telling Simon that I didn't remember part of the night would not help this situation. At least he was less angry at me when I nodded that my memory wasn't faulty.

"They didn't give me anything. I didn't eat or drink anything over there," I answered, verbally confirming that nothing had happened to me.

"God, Clary, what were you thinking?" Simon fell back on the couch beside me, clearly having fulfilled his duties as protective best friend, and conscience.

"I don't think I was, Si," I answered. "How much trouble are you in?"

"I'm grounded for the rest of the summer."

"Because I snuck out?" I could only imagine what punishment I would receive when Elaine got home.

"Because I tried to cover you," he gave a half smile. "I don't think it'll stick though. Mom was just panicked because you've never snuck away from her before. Once she sees your fine, I think the sentence will be reduced, to like maybe a couple days."

"I'm sorry," I offered again as we sat on the couch.

"Just, next time, tell me. So I can at least tell her I know your safe?"

"Deal."

* * *

The internet is a truly wonderful thing. I love that there is a device that can tell me all about a person, literally any person in the world, from the comfort of Simon's bed. I especially love Wikipedia, because it condenses all the information from all over the internet to a nice little page for celebrities. Even little known celebrities like Jace Wayland.

Jace Wayland is the son of Michael Wayland, who was killed when Jace was only ten. According to Wikipedia (who sources the information from the actual news reports, sourced by the police working the case) Jace was there and saw his father murdered by members of a dying Mafia Family. There wasn't a lot of information about the Family responsible for the murder, either because no one is sure which Family it was or because there is literally no information on the Family, which means it's either good at not being caught, or super small.

Michael Wayland scored movies for a living, and was life-long friend of movie producer Robert Lightwood. After Michael's death, Robert took Jace in and raised him as one of his own. Though he never adopted Jace, Jace was often referred to as the third of the Famous Lightwood children.

Jace was classically trained on piano, credited for being a protégé at the age of nine. He's preformed in Madison Square Gardens, and attended Julliard while very young. When he moved into the Lightwood's his music took a back seat to acting. Credited as Jonathan Lightwood, he acted beside his Foster siblings in several of their straight to DVD movies, and started working as a Stunt Double for Alexander when he turned fifteen. Not long after that Jace was hired as a Stunt Double for several big-name stars in movies.

Jace is also a well-known name on Broadway, which was surprising to me. In addition to learning to play piano, Jace was also taught to act and sing, though he prefers not to, and dance, which is what he credits to his ability at not dying in the ridiculous stunts he performs on the various movie sets. He played in several big-named productions as a preteen, and still performs in choice shows when his schedule allows it.

Recently he was cast a lead in a movie along-side his foster siblings, Alexander and Isabelle Lightwood, in a production from Lightwood Films. There are rumors that he has also been cast in the latest rendition of Wicked on Broadway as Fiyero. But those are just rumors, with no confirmation from Wayland's agent Hodge Starkwaether, from Starkweather Talent Agencies.

So Jace hadn't lied to me. He was famous, but since I wasn't completely in love with the Lightwoods, or musical theater, I had not heard of him. I felt a little better knowing that at least. I also felt like the stalker fangirl Alec accused me of being.

I had googled a celebrity, something I had always sworn I would never do. Not only had I googled him, but I had read the entire Wikipedia article on him, the articles on his dead father, foster father, and siblings. I had also read the articles off a few of the not Wikipedia sites, including his fan-page. I was a stalking fangirl.

A stalking fangirl with the celebrity's cell number.

People really shouldn't be trusted with that kind of power.

Another joy of the internet: movie access.

I don't condone pirating movies, but since I was grounded via phone for sneaking out in the middle of the night, and under threat to be home when Elaine returned, I'm not going to complain actively about it. I watched the straight to DVD movies from the Lightwoods most of the day with Simon. He complained the whole time, naturally, but he ended up watching them anyway. After that we discovered that the Lightwoods had voiced English dubs of an obscure anime, we judged the show harshly but ultimately enjoyed the series.

That was what we were doing when Elaine got home from work, with earth-shattering news.


	9. Chapter 9

There's a saying that our lives are made up of moments. What we remember most are the big moments. But those moments we remember, the big ones that shape our lives, are terrifying.

I will always remember what I was doing when Elaine came home that night. I will always remember the look on her face as she looked at me and Simon sprawled on the couch watching some obscure little known anime. I will always remember the night Elaine told me that my mother was missing, and possibly dead.

"Oh, Clary," Elaine sat on the couch between me and Simon, wrapping her arms around me. "I'm sorry honey," she consoled me, brushing my hair back as she held me close to her.

I didn't say anything. What could I have said? I know you're supposed to offer condolences when something bad happens, but I'd never been on the receiving end of those. I couldn't remember what Simon or Rebecca had said when their dad died, and I didn't have any family besides my mom.

I tried not to cry too. I tried really hard not to completely breakdown there in the living room. I didn't say anything, and I tried not to cry; but I was glad that Simon's mom was holding me. It was possible I would have completely collapsed is she wasn't holding me up.

Elaine is our contact person beside Luke. Luke was unreachable, which was weird because Luke is never unreachable, so the police called Elaine while she was at work. Elaine had been late coming home because she had been at my house, talking to the police about the break-in.

I knew I would have to go see what was missing. I would have to talk to the police about any possible enemies my mom would have, to see why we would be targeted by whoever it was that ransacked our home and set it on fire. Elaine told me she had made an appointment for the following morning, so I had time to process what had happened.

She told me about the mess. The door busted in, broken in half and tethered in place by the hinges. The burn marks on the walls, the charred furniture, and the trail of blood leading from the house. The amount of blood was what led the police to believe that my mother was dead.

The police had gone to check on Luke. The book store was closed up, all the doors and windows were boarded up, like Luke was leaving for an extended trip. They tried his phone, both his cell and his home. The house phone was disconnected; his cell phone was turned off.

"It'll be okay though. It'll all be okay," Elaine soothed as we sat there. "I'm here for you Clary. I always will be."

I slept in Rebecca's room that night. I knew I could have stayed in Simon's, but I really just wanted to be alone. Simon sat in there with me for a while, but eventually he left.

It was almost midnight when I pulled my phone out and called the familiar number of my mother's best friend. Luke's phone rang three times before Luke picked up. "Luke, where are you?"

"Clary," there was static on the phone. "Clary are you safe?"

"Luke, what's going on?" I asked quietly pressing the phone into the side of my head. "Do you know what happened to my mom?"

"Are you safe?" he asked again, more urgently.

"Luke, what's going on?"

"I can't tell you, but if you're safe then it won't matter."

"What does that mean?"

"I torched the place, they don't know about you. They can't now."

"Who?"

"Don't call me again."

The line went dead.

"Luke?" I felt tears well in my eyes as the silence grew in my ears.

Not Luke. Luke couldn't just cut me off and vanish. He had always been there, since I could remember Luke had been there. He'd pushed me on the swings in the park as a kid, picked me up from school, I had a room in his house; Luke was as integral a part of my life as Simon and his family.

And he had torched my home? Told me not to call him? Why? Why would he do any of that?

And who was he talking about? Who didn't know about me, and would never get the chance too since Luke burned my life away? What did Luke know?

I cried after that. My mom was gone. Luke had abandoned me. Anyone would have cried.

I also did something slightly stupid.

I was an emotional wreck, that is my defense for my actions that night. People in emotional destress don't make rational decisions. Emotional wrecks also shouldn't be left alone to contemplate their lives in the middle of the night. We're not to be trusted.

"Hey, I'm glad you called," he answered with what was becoming the familiar hint of laughter in his tone.

"Hey," I gasped trying not to cry while talking. "How was that death scene today?" I said emotional people are not to be trusted.

"Are you okay?" Jace asked, all hints at amusement instantly leaving him. "It sounds like you're crying?"

"No, I'm not crying," I scrubbed my cheeks with the back of my hand, as if removing the evidence he couldn't see would change the fact that I was actually crying while talking to an almost perfect stranger on the phone. "I was just bored, that's all."

Jace didn't immediately say anything in response. "How much trouble are you in for staying out all night?" he finally asked.

"Grounded indefinitely," I answered. "My head on a platter when my mom gets home," I sighed, "and a few other choice punishments, still undetermined."

"Until your mom gets home?"

"Yeah."

"That's pretty rough," Jace commented. "Your brother upset about you staying out all night without him?"

"I don't have a brother," I scoffed. I was an only child, fifteen years with Simon as the closest thing I had to a sibling, and he lived three blocks away. I found it funny that Jace would comment that Simon was my brother. But Jace hadn't met Simon, and Simon was in the band videos just as much as I was.

"Who called you then? A boyfriend? That's probably worse," he commented more to himself than to me. "Are you sure you're not crying?"

"You never told me about the death scene," I deviated. "Or that final battle, where Jem comes back to life."

"It's overrated," Jace answered. "I don't think the director liked anything we did today. So if you were released for good behavior," he trailed off hopefully.

"Alec said you can't have guests on the set."

"Alec says a lot of things," Jace countered. "And as a potential client of Hodge Starkweather, I don't honestly think Alec can actually stop you from coming on set. And I never have guests, so no one will be mad if I bring someone along every once in a while."

"Probably not tomorrow," I gave a brief laugh.

"Grounded?" he asked.

"And I've got a thing."

"Oh, a thing," he said disbelievingly.

"I'm serious."

"I believe you. I mean, you wouldn't call a person you didn't want to hang out with. But generally I get better than 'a thing' as an excuse."

"I would tell you," I started.

"But?" he asked.

"It's like really complicated," I answered.

"I feel that," he commented. "Do you really want to hear about the death scene? Because I can go over it in great detail."

"Describe away, I could use a distraction."

"Because you've been stripped of all forms of entertainment?"

"Yeah," I lied. "Everything except my phone."

"Which you used to call me. I'm honored," I could hear his smile. I smiled back. "So let me give the run down on what's happening before they kill Jem, otherwise his death won't mean very much…"


	10. Chapter 10

Elaine took off work the following morning. She took me to the house so that I had emotional support when I looked upon the ruins of my life. I had already been told that my childhood home had been torched, I had been told the door had been busted in, that everything had been ransacked before the fire.

That didn't mean I was ready to look at it.

The whole house was corded off with police tap, the flowers my mom had planted just a few weeks before were wilted from dehydration and the heat of the fire. The roof was partially collapsed, though the police told Elaine that it didn't cause much damage on the first floor, it was just the second floor where our rooms were that had been completely destroyed, and the house was stable enough for us to enter and see what was missing.

Based off the horrible and brief call I had with Luke the night before, I could have easily told the cops that nothing was missing. I could have told them that Luke knew something about what had happened at the house. But there was something about that talk with Luke that stopped me from telling them about Luke.

He had been concerned about me. I knew because he had asked about my safety more than once. He had also said "they didn't know about me" meaning he had lit the place up to hide my existence from someone. So he was working outside of the police, but he was trying to make sure someone else didn't know about me.

I wanted to trust Luke. I wanted to believe that whatever was happening was not Luke's fault and he was just a victim of circumstance. It was hard given the brashness of the conversation the night before, but I kept my tongue and entered the house with Elaine and the police officer.

Everything was covered in black soot and ash. Charred piles were left where the furniture had stood, and holes peppered the drywall. The family pictures were all missing, Luke probably had something to do with that. He might have saved them, or he might had removed them from their frames to ensure they were destroyed. The stairs to the second floor had been inspected and cleared, so I could go to the bed rooms.

There was nothing left of my room. The police officer said they thought the fire had started there, on my bed. In my mom's room the only thing still half way recognizable was a small box she had kept hidden under her vanity in the bathroom. She had told me it had belonged to my father, but the contents tended to say otherwise.

The outside was charred, but the inside was okay. It held baby shoes, a lock of pale-blond hair, and other baby things. The whole box was dedicated to a child who was not me. The police asked if I knew anything about it.

I didn't, and they said I would get the box back when the investigation was finished.

That little box was the only thing salvageable from the fire. The intensity of the fire meant that I couldn't tell if anything was missing. The blood outside on the walk had come back as a match to my mother. I didn't ask how they knew that, why they would have my mother's blood on file. The policeman offered his apologies before we left the scene.

Next was the police station, so I could tell the police about my mom, about any potential enemies she might have, what she had been doing recently, if she had been acting weird. Had she been involved with anyone, someone who seemed odd? Was there anything about her completely normal life that would make her a target for this kind of attack.

I told them that she hadn't been acting weird. And that was true, my mom hadn't been acting any differently than normal. I did mention the phone call, the last time I had talked to her, about how she had told me to go to Simon's and not call her.

They wanted a statement on that. They wanted a full run-down on the conversation, trying to pull information out of it. They suspected that was the night my mom was killed and her body moved.

Later someone came by and ransacked the house, then burned everything. Why would someone want to attack my mom? I asked them, the cops already seemed to have an idea. They wouldn't say though.

* * *

People always tell me I got my artist ability from my mom. I never saw any of her pieces, she stopped painting and sketching when I was born. She had always said I was her greatest masterpiece, nothing else would ever compare.

I had heard some of her pieces were on display in various galleries across the city. That her pieces were sought after for grander galleries and upper-crust art collectors. I never really gave it much thought before she went missing.

Elaine told me she knew the name of a buyer, someone who had collected a fair number of my mother's pieces. He was in Brooklynn, a guy named Magnus Bane. His gallery was as high-society as things came, which couldn't be said about Magnus.

There were rumors that Magnus was the head of a drug cartel. There were rumors that he was the heir of a Mafia Family. There was proof that he lived a life similar to that of Tony Stark in the Iron Man comics before he became Iron Man. He had been arrested for public indecency and disruption of the peace multiple times a month. Magnus Bane was at the head of an Empire, and used his money and poor judgement to live life in a constant party.

Why had he cared so much about my mother's art? I have no idea. But he had bought most of the pieces recently, for his new gallery opening in Brooklynn.

Down side to Magus Bane owning most of my mother's art, actually all of the pieces on display publicly: you have to be in his good graces to get in his galleries. He has to invite you to the gallery, or you have to pay an outrageous price to enter.

I didn't have either of those.

I was really upset about that. My mother was gone and the only chance I had at seeing her artwork now was behind lock and key. I doubted signing that contract with Hodge Starkweather would have given me access to that gallery.

Luckily Simon was there to drag me out of the house, and part of my self-pity.

"I think it's stupid," Simon commented while we browsed the shelves at _Manga Planet_. "I could read all of these online for free, and they're charging out the ass to get the volumes."

"It's convenience, Si," I commented, reading the synopsis for the latest volume of _Bleach._ "You can read them, admire them, save your place, and have a whole bookshelf full of them; or you can stare at the computer for the amount of time it takes for you to catch up and the pages to load."

"Why are we spending our money here anyway? I thought you wanted to get into that art gallery?" Simon asked, walking down the aisle and looking at the bright spines of the latest stories from Japan.

"There's no way I can afford that," I put _Bleach_ down and moved further down the aisle. "Magnus Bane's gallery is meant for Magnus Bane and his friends, no one else could ever afford to go."

"But it's your mother's work," Simon pressed, flipping through a manga and deciding it wasn't anything he cared for. "Maybe if you talked to him, and explained," he picked up another volume.

"Explained that his favorite artist might be dead, and I wanted to see her works? How would that help me?" I snapped.

"Anything sounds bad if you say it with that attitude," Simon commented sourly thumbing through _Vampire Knight_. "And I was thinking that if you said you were an aspiring artist, and his favorite artist's daughter, he might let you in to see." He set _Vampire Knight_ aside for something else.

"Or he might laugh in my face and turn me away," I countered giving up on pretending to find a new manga and turning on Simon. "I know you're trying to distract me, but there are much better ways than this," I motioned around the aisles filled with volume upon volume of manga.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good manga as much as the next girl. But it's like Simon said, I can read it online and not spend my limited cash on volumes I'll read maybe twice.

"I'm not," Simon didn't look at me. He turned farther away from me, pretending to be really interested in _Rosario + Vampire_.

"Simon."

"I'm not, I wanted to browse through the new delivery of manga, hoping something good came in this week."

I deflated, my shoulders falling with a heavy sigh. "I'm sorry, Simon. I'm just kinda stressed out."

"I get it," he brushed the apology aside. He knew I didn't mean anything by what I'd said, and since I didn't mean it there was no need to apologize. "I would be stressed out too."

"So is there anything good?"

"Nope," Simon smiled. "I feel like coffee? Do you feel like coffee?"

"Is that even a question?" I smiled. "I need coffee."


	11. Chapter 11

It's clear that Simon and I spend too much time at Java Jones. All of the employees know us by sight and can make our drinks and have them ready before we actually reach the register. And even though there's not always a place to sit, we've still been known to hang around.

That night, while we were lounging on a couch near one of the windows, I realized how bad it is that we spend so much time in the same place.

It wasn't Eric or Matt. I would have been okay if it was Eric and Matt, well if it had been Matt. Eric gets on my nerves, and I had already seen too much of him since school let out for the summer. No, our addiction to Java Jones coffee was well known thanks to the band's videos, and that made us easy enough to find…

By none other than Jace Wayland.

He sauntered into the building, wearing reflective aviator glasses, a black leather jacket, dark denim jeans and combat boots. He was also still sporting the fake tattoos for the movie they were shooting. Jace took the aviators off and dropped them in the breast pocket of his jacket as he looked around the room.

I could see the smile bloom across his face when he saw me.

Jace made a bee-line to the couch where I was sitting with Simon. I started to slink down in the couch cushions, hiding my face behind my coffee cup. Simon looked at me curiously.

"What are you doing?" he half laughed watching me.

"In roughly ten seconds, you are going to hate me," I whispered out of the side of my mouth.

"I seriously doubt that," Simon laughed, looking around to see what was causing me to act so strangely.

"No, it's a real thing," I answered quietly. "A really, real thing."

"Clary!" Jace fell on the couch, forcing himself in the small space between Simon and myself. Simon looked at me startled as he scooted over giving Jace enough room to sit comfortably. "I texted you, you didn't text me back. And since you said you had a thing this morning, I figured you'd come for coffee after."

"Are you stalking me?"

"No," Jace shook his head roughly, turning to Simon. "Hi," he greeted almost too brightly.

"You are stalking me," I accused him. "You're stalking me in costume," I amended, looking him over again to make sure I wasn't imaging his outfit.

"I'm not in costume," Jace looked down at himself, taking in the dark clothes and combat boots. "This is what I always wear," he popped the collar of his jacket, giving a subtle nod as he did so.

"Combat boots?" I arched my brow, my eyes dropping to the professionally worn-out combat boots. The same pair he had been wearing while I was with him and Alec on the movie set.

"It's a fashion statement," Jace defended himself, taking Simon's coffee from his hand. "Thanks," he saluted Simon with the cup.

"That's my coffee," Simon gaped at Jace.

"So, you've done your thing, I assume, since you're getting coffee, and we've had coffee. How about we go to the set, and you can watch us kill Alec?"

"How do you know this isn't the thing she had to do?" Simon took his cup back from Jace, clearly not realizing that Jace was the foster sibling of the Lightwoods, and while not as famous as his siblings he was still famous. "What if she's on a date?"

Jace turned his attention to Simon, possibly really seeing Simon for the first time. Jace frowned as he looked Simon over, his gaze lingering on the "Chick Magnet" graphic on Simon's t-shirt. "You can do much better," Jace turned back to me. "For instance, I am inviting you to watch Alec die a painful death on set today. And I'm much nicer on the eyes."

"I think Kealie was right, you are a charmer," I gave a visibly forced smile to Jace.

"I'm always charming," Jace agreed happily, ignoring my sarcasm. "And I only have like twenty more minutes before I'm due back on set for a training session with the swords," Jace pulled his phone out to check the time. "Less, actually. So do you want to go?" He looked up at me, almost pleadingly.

"She's busy," Simon commented, leaning around Jace so he was looking at me. "Tell him you're busy."

I looked between Simon and Jace. I looked between my oldest and best friend, and the boy I had met two days before who was offering me a whole new life. I looked between the two of them, and I kept coming back to Jace.

I wanted to hang out with Simon. I wanted the normalcy of being with Simon, bouncing between Java Jones, Eric's garage for band practice, book shops, and all the other places Simon and I had frequented our whole lives. After the morning I had had, I wanted to just hang out with Simon and forget about it.

At the same time, Jace made a much better distraction. Jace wanted to take me to a movie set, to hang out with people, people who didn't manage to annoy me with only three words. Jace was a whole new adventure, one with no connection to my life or knowledge about my mom and the current state of my house.

I really wanted that normalcy. I really wanted that adventure. I really wished I was more decisive.

"I," I started, still looking between Jace and Simon.

"Clary," Simon pulled my attention away from Jace. "Tell him."

"Come on Clary," Jace smiled, a crooked smile that accented his chipped tooth. "It'll be fun. I bet Iz would let you try on some of her wardrobe for the movie."

"Clary doesn't want to try on stuff like that," Simon defended for me, Jace rolled his eyes in response.

"Who doesn't want to try on pieces from a movie wardrobe?" he asked sarcastically, turning around to look at Simon again. "You could do with the assistance of a stylist, or just to see what a good outfit consists of," he held his hands up, motioning to Simon as a whole.

Simon looked down at himself, then glared up at Jace.

"Unless, that," he motioned at Simon as a whole again, "is working for you," Jace conceded. "Is that the sort of thing some girls are into?" He turned back to me, "is that a thing some girls are into?"

"How I dress isn't your concern," Simon grabbed Jace by the shoulder and turned him around so they were nose to nose. "And Clary doesn't want to go with you, okay. So leave her alone."

"That sounds oddly threatening," Jace's head cocked to one side as he talked to Simon. "And I know a little, boy," he gave a small smile at the descriptive term, "like you shouldn't be making such big threats."

"I'm not scared of you, or your leather jacket and combat boots," I could hear the hitch in Simon's voice, though I doubt anyone else would. "I don't buy the bad boy act."

"It's not an act," Jace laughed in his throat, trying not to laugh aloud in Simon's face and act as if the whole encounter was not hilarious to him. Though it was hilarious to him, it seemed that Jace wasn't exactly socialized. "I have a rap-sheet; I've done things that would make you piss your pants. That would make your daddy piss his pants," Jace corrected with a slight twitch of his lips, as if he was trying not to grin as he spoke to Simon.

"And I don't really care about your lame shirt, and trying too hard to be cool attitude. I want to hang out with Clary, and I think she would like a change in scenery. Wouldn't you Clary?" Jace didn't turn away from Simon, his golden eyes narrowed in a glare.

"Jace, I," I really wish I was a bit more decisive. "Stop it, both of you."

They had started a staring match, in which Jace was about to start smacking at Simon. Simon looked a few seconds away from smacking at Jace too. They were acting childishly, over hanging out with me.

"We're in public," I hissed, shooting a glare at both of them.

"You know where we wouldn't be in public? The set, and I can hire a taxi to get us there in just a few minutes," Jace slipped his arm around my shoulder, meaning to pull me up from the couch and take me to a waiting taxi.

"She doesn't want to go to your stupid movie set," Simon jumped to his feet and stood in front of me and Jace. "Do you Clary?"

I opened my mouth to comment, though I had no idea what I was going to say. I never got the chance to say anything though. That was the precise moment my phone decided to ring.

I frowned pulling the phone out of my pocket, checking the ID before opening the phone.

"Who is it?" Simon leaned forward trying to see the name before I answered.

"Hello, Clarissa," a man said as I pressed the phone to my ear. "I'm glad you answered my call."

"Who are you?"

"Who I am is of little importance at the moment," the man answered. "What is important is this, Clarissa, I know where your mother is. And while she is hurt, she is very much alive."

I felt my jaw slacken, I felt my mind run through a hundred things to say, to ask this man. But I couldn't get any of those thoughts into words. I couldn't even manage to close my mouth as the man talked to me.

"Now, I will send the proof of life to the address of the family home; every week until I get what I want. You should not involve the police in this matter, Clarissa. That will just prolong the proceedings here."

"What do you want?" I finally managed to say something. I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, hear my pulse in my ears. Who was this man and why would he have taken my mother? What could she have possibly had that meant anything to this man?

"Nothing much, Clarissa." I could hear a grim sense of amusement in his voice. "Your mother has something in her possession that I have a great need for. Once I have that, your mother will be returned to you, no more the worse for wear."

"What is it?"

"Expect the first video by the end of this week."

The line went dead.


	12. Chapter 12

I left Java Jones.

I left without a word to Simon.

I left without saying anything to Jace.

I left everything except my phone sitting on the couch.

I ran down the street, to one of the only places I felt could possibly be safe for me.

I ran to Luke's.

My mom first introduced me to Luke when I was around five, roughly around the same time that I met Simon. She told me he was one of her oldest friends, and that I could trust him. Since then Luke has been a constant presence in my life.

I have a room in his house above the book shop, I would stay with him from time to time when mom allowed it. He had picked me up from school, taken me to school, chaperoned school trips when my mom couldn't. When it came right down to it, I would call Luke before I called Simon or his mom.

So with my own home under investigation for the fire, and the break in, and apparent murder of my mother, I went to Luke's. I wanted a space that was mine, with some of my things. I wanted to be away from Simon for a minute, away from Jace and his insistence about going to the set to hang out with him, Alec and Izzy. I needed Luke, to be honest.

I needed him to listen to me and tell it would all be okay.

I needed him to tell me a stupid joke to try to distract me.

I needed him to order a pizza because he knew I would need it, and not even ask me what I wanted because he doesn't mind to eat my favorite.

I needed Luke to be the man my mom said I could always trust, and I needed him in that moment more than ever.

I have a key to Luke's place. Not that it helped me much since all my stuff was with Simon. But I also know where Luke keeps his spare, and boarded up doors or not, I was getting in that house.

Luke's place is as familiar to me as my own home or Simon's. I can navigate it in the dark, which was what happened since Luke effectively shut the place up. I half ran up the stairs into the spare room I occupied when I stayed with Luke. I collapsed on the bed and tried to forget everything that had happened since school had let out for the summer.

Apparently that's not a thing. Forgetting it isn't a thing, because people don't let it be a thing. And that is a thing, a really real thing.

Who called you

It was Simon. Of course it was Simon. He wouldn't just let me run off and not text me to find out why. He also would have taken the stuff I left behind home with him. He was a good friend like that.

Probably none of my business but boarded up buildings are generally not a good place to hang out

Also it is possible breaking and entering

Not that ill say anything ive done it before

It was Jace, naturally. He was more of a creepy, fanatic, stalker, than I ever thought possible. Of course he had trailed after me. Unlike Simon who knew I would have wound up at Luke's, Jace probably thought something was seriously wrong. He had probably exchanged words with Simon at Java Jones too.

If you need anything call me

I closed the phone and held it close to my chest, curled up there on the bed. Both of them had texted me. Jace had followed me, despite having to be back on set for his training. But I didn't want either of them to bother me.

Honestly, I just wanted Luke to come home so I could talk to him.

Since I didn't grow up with a father, I suppose I look at Luke like my dad. He's always been there, so it's easy to look at him that way. Not only that, but he's always acted how I imagine a father does. He acts the way Simon's father did before he died when we were kids.

My mom was being held hostage somewhere. And I had Simon and his mom, and they cared, but it wasn't the same. I wanted my family, I wanted people I didn't have to share or borrow, someone who knew my favorite thing and could make it happen. And I needed that someone to be an adult, who could handle the mess.

And even though he told me not to anymore, I called Luke anyway.

I could hear the phone ringing in my ear. I could also hear the phone ringing in the room down the hall. I sat up, listening to the ringtone playing in another room. It wasn't like it was a really loud ringtone, it's just that the house was so quiet, the ringtone carried.

I slipped back into the hall, still calling Luke on my cell. The ringtone was playing in Luke's bedroom. I could hear it clearly through the closed bedroom door.

"Who's calling you Lucian?"

I stopped just outside the door, hearing someone talking inside Luke's room.

"I don't know, I don't have my phone," it was Luke, his words were slurred and almost impossible to understand, but I recognized his voice.

"It's an unlisted number," another man commented.

"Then how am I supposed to know?" I could hear someone being punched, I guessed it was Luke, since he was the one who made the next noise. "You're getting soft Pangborn," he muttered.

"Shut up Lucian," Pangborn snapped, I could hear him punch Luke again.

"Don't beat him up too much, we need him to be able to talk."

"I've been trying to get him to talk for two days," Pangborn responded hotly. "And apart from actually removing a body part, I don't know how else to make him talk."

"You've just been doing it wrong," the other man had a sickly sweet voice as he spoke. "Allow me."

"Be my guest."

I heard a chair scrap across the hardwood floor of Luke's room. Luke gasped, as if something had crashed into his chest. "Careful there, Blackwell. I have to be able to talk remember."

"Shut up Greymark," I heard the sounds of someone being punched again, and the air rushing out of Luke's mouth. "I'm tired of the games."

"I hate to see what would happen if this was serious then," forced laughter from Luke. "Come on Emil, we've been at this for two days. If I had something to say, or even give you, wouldn't I have by now?"

"I'm going to give you to the count of three," Blackwell said. "Three—"

"I don't have what your Boss wants," Luke interrupted quickly. "I don't even know where it is."

"Yes, you do. Jocelyn hid it, and we know that you know where she put it."

"Jocelyn didn't tell me anything."

Blackwell and Pangborn laughed, low throaty chuckles.

"We both know that's not true," Pangborn laughed. "Come on Lucian, just tell us, and this will all be over and you can go back and wait for Jocelyn with her little whelp."

"You think I care about that?" There was a forced sense of amusement in Luke's voice, like he was trying hard to force the laugh.

"Why else would you spend all this time here?" Blackwell sneered.

"I wanted it too, you idiots," Luke growled. "I figured if I could get it from Jocelyn, Valentine would take that price off my head."

"Valentine doesn't care about you," Pangborn scoffed. "You're dead as far as he's concerned."

"Then maybe I can bring myself back to life," Luke replied coldly. "I was his Right Hand you know, back when the Circle was young and impressionable."

"It doesn't matter what you were, Lucian. You're dead as far as the Circle is concerned. And Jocelyn would be too if she hadn't run off with Valentine's stuff."

"Valentine doesn't actually care about that. He just wants Jocelyn back. He's always been possessive. He's pissed that Jocelyn got away from him, and wants her under his thumb again."

There was more laughter from Blackwell and Pangborn. "It's more than that, Lucian."

"What else then? The golden statutes from China, the ancient tomes from London, the French tapestries, the gold doubloons; what else is this about if not his ill-gotten goods from all over the world?"

"It's about the cup, Lucian!" Luke was hit again, hit so hard his chair upended and crashed on the floor. "That bitch took it when she ran off, and Valentine wants it back!"

"It's just a cup, Samuel."

"It's more than that, and you know it!"

"That cup is worth your weight in gold, worth all our weights in gold," Pangborn corrected with a grim chuckle. "And Valentine wants it back."

"Good luck to him then. I've been hanging around her for the last ten years, put up with the most mundane, unimaginable crap for her; and she's never even hinted that she had Valentine's stupid cup."

"You just didn't have the right leverage."

"And what leverage do you have?"

"The girl," Blackwell answered. "Jocelyn's daughter."

"That brat has nothing to do with this. She was born after Jocelyn ratted Valentine out to the Feds."

"The brat is Valentine's, and he knows it," Pangborn spat. "And as soon as he gets the cup back, all the Feds in New York won't be able to stop him from keeping both of them right where he wants them."

"And where is that?"

Blackwell chuckled, his low throaty laughter again. "Six feet under, with the rest of the people who got in his way."


	13. Chapter 13

I backed down the hall, trying to get the sound of Pangborn and Blackwell's laughter out of my head. For the most part I was quiet, I can be completely silent if I want to. But while upset over the mysterious phone call at Java Jones, and over hearing Luke in the interrogation, I mis- stepped—and hit the wall.

The thump was quiet, ordinarily it would have gone unnoticed. But the house was creepy quiet, and I wasn't supposed to be there. That quiet, little thump against the wall seemed to echo in the stillness of the house over the bookstore.

As the doorknob on Luke's bedroom started to turn, I bolted. I thundered down the steps, they were already coming, there was no point trying to go unnoticed. I needed to make myself scarce, fast. I slammed into the back door, fumbling with the handle until it cracked and swung inward.

Three gunshots fired behind me as I ran down the street. Were they aimed at me? Probably. Did I stop? Not a chance.

I ran all the way to Simon's house.

* * *

The cops were at Simon's when I got there. They were looking for me, to move me to a safe house while they conducted the investigation on my mom's disappearance, and the arson of our house. They had nothing new to tell me, but they did take my phone away.

"You can't call people. You can't come into contact with people."

"I'm a teenager," I protested, watching at the man shoved my phone in the pocket of his uniform pants. "I can't live without talking to my friends!"

"Don't be so dramatic," the officer sneered down at me. "It's just until we close our investigation."

"That could be forever." It would be a long time, since they had no clue about what had happened at the house. They only knew that my mom was gone, injured, and possibly dead, and an old Mafia Family was possibly involved.

Elaine had the news on when I got home, I had to listen to the news anchor report about the Circle and my missing mother while the Police talked to Elaine about where they were taking me. It wasn't anywhere I felt like going.

"We have a safe house upstate."

"Isn't that where they found Valentine's supposed body?" I asked, interrupting the over-weight and super sweaty cop.

"What do you mean supposed?" the cop turned on me, one brow cocked in suspicion.

"The dude on the news said the cabin where they found him had been torched, like my house and other places. Who's to say that was really Valentine in that house, the body was burned to a crisp."

"The dental records matched," the cop answered guardedly, as if that completely resolved the issue.

I guess it should have, but I have a thing about watching crime shows with Simon. There are ways to get around dental records. And I had the feeling Valentine Morgenstern would be the kind of guy who would fake his death.

"I just don't believe he would have offed himself," I suggested mildly. "He was a Mafia Boss, they off other people not themselves."

"I don't think upstate is a good idea," Elaine cut the cop off before he could "educate" me about how dental records worked. "What if some of the Circle are up there? What if this is about that, and they come after Clary because of what her mother did?"

"Ma'am, I assure you, our safe houses are secure. Clary will be perfectly safe there, with an armed guard at all times," the cop was nice to Simon's mom. Then again, she wasn't doubting the validity of what he was saying to her. Elaine was just being protective, for which I was thankful.

"What if I don't want to go into a safe house, cut off from the entire world for days or possibly weeks?"

"I can't allow that. Your mother angered a lot of people when she started working the with FBI to bring down the Circle. Some of them could still be loyal to the old ways, they've taken your mother and burned your house. Do you really want to chance it?"

"I'm not afraid of a little gang," I scoffed, folding my arms over chest and glaring up at the cop. "And being upstate makes me an easier target, especially if they see me moved."

"So you agree that you need to go into protective custody?"

"No." If I went upstate, I wouldn't be able to get whatever it was that man wanted from the house. I couldn't receive the proof of life on my mom every week if they shipped me off. And if they pinned a tail on me, the cops would find out what I was up too.

"Clary," Elaine sighed, covering her eyes with her hand. "Please, it's for your safety." I knew that. I wasn't stupid.

"Mom took me upstate every summer," I had to stay in the City. "She took me to Luke's farm," they couldn't take me away from New York City. "Some of the Circle could be out there. Luke was part of it." I messed up.

"How do you know that?" the cop narrowed his eyes at me.

"Luke packed up the same day the house burned," it was true, the cops had gone to Luke's house and found him missing. Now I knew why, but I wasn't going to tell the cops, it could mess up the deal with my mom. "Why else would he do that if not to join up with or hide from the people responsible for taking my mom?" What other reason would Luke have for suddenly boarding up his home and dropping off the face of the planet? Apart from being abducted, that is.

"Fine," the cop narrowed his eyes further, "No safe house." I almost cheered out loud. "But you can't stay here." And everything started to fall apart.

"Then where is she going to stay?"

"I said no protective custody," I nearly shouted the same time that Elaine asked her well placed question.

"The Lewis house is a known place that you frequent," the officer looked directly at me, daring me to contradict him. "If this is the Circle, they would know that. If any of this actually has anything to do with those maniacs, they will know what you do, where you go and who you hang out with. You cannot be around any of that until this whole issue is resolved."

"What if it never gets resolved?"

"Protective custody."

"Not a chance," I was ready to continue. I really was. I had dozens of stupid reasons why I couldn't go into protective custody, I was ready to argue the dumbest of them for hours. I was ready for it.

But by virtue of some divine force (be it the gods, a God, or the Force) the cop's phone started ringing, my phone started ringing in the cop's back pocket, and Elaine's phone started ringing.

I've often heard the phrase, "I know a guy." I've used it on occasion to justify getting something I shouldn't have had or ordinarily wouldn't be able to get my hands on. I've never seen it used with such skill and accuracy as it was that night.

Jace Wayland knows a guy. He knows a guy everywhere, and can do some nearly impossible things, if not completely improbable. Jace Wayland knows a guy with the Feds, and used that power to land me in protective custody.

I know I said I didn't want it. I know I complained about it, and thought up reasons why it was a bad move. But Jace Wayland has this charm, and the perfect answer to the issue.

That night, I was relocated to the Lightwood House.

* * *

 _Police believe the abduction of Jocelyn Fairchild is related to the return of power for the Mafia Family commonly referred to as the Circle. Fairchild was formerly a hitman for the Family, and married to the Family's Boss, Valentine Morgenstern. The fire, which destroyed Fairchild's Brooklyn home, was set and burned in similar to manner as the arson files for crimes associated with the Circle._

 _Emergency services arrived at Fairchild's home after receiving a call about gun shots and screaming. When Police arrived on the scene, Fairchild and her adolescent daughter, Clarissa Fray, where nowhere to be found. Blood in the back yard matched Jocelyn Fairchild's, authorities are still searching for Fairchild but are not optimistic. Fairchild's daughter was found staying with a friend, and moved to protective custody with the FBI._

 _While police and other emergency services were still on the scene, the house went up in flames. During the highpoints of the Circle's reign, Circle members would set evidence ablaze to destroy any and all clues leading back to specific members. The Fire Marshal confirmed that the fire at the Fairchild home was set in an identical manner, leading the FBI and Homeland Security to believe that the Circle has returned._

 _Fairchild worked with police in the early nineties to bring the Circle to justice after the death of her young son, Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern. The Circle was one the most rapidly growing Mafia Families in the current era, responsible for a crime spree resulting in the loss of millions of dollars from the U.S. Government, and several other Global entities, and the loss of hundreds of priceless historical artifacts and art pieces._

 _During the trial for the Circle members brought to custody, Valentine Morgenstern escaped from the New York State Penitentiary. After a three-week long man-hunt the body of Valentine Morgenstern was found in an abandoned cabin near the U.S./Canada border, the cabin and the body of Valentine Morgenstern were burned. It's believed Valentine took his own life and burned the place with as many of his stolen goods as his could._

 _With the death of Morgenstern, the underground Circle Members turned themselves in and the Circle was disbanded. Members who willingly cooperated with Law Enforcement Agencies before the death for Morgenstern were pardoned. Those who willingly turned themselves in were sentenced to time in the State Penitentiary and have been released within the last four years. Five of the Circle members were sentenced to Life in Prison, they are still serving at separate facilities without the possibility of Parole._


	14. Chapter 14

"You understand the rules of this engagement?"

I nodded.

"You understand what happens when you break the rules?"

I nodded again.

"You have my card?"

I nodded, reaching around to my back pocket where I had stashed Special Agent Whitelaw's card when he picked me up from Simon's.

Special Agent Whitelaw was the kind of man who would frighten small children. He was tall and burly, with a face that was both pockmarked and scarred horribly. He talked with a low baritone voice, and was very brash about everything. When he had given me the rundown on the situation I had wanted nothing more than to agree. I was scared he would yell, which would have been terrifying, or he would snap me in half, his arms were as thick around as my waist.

I know he meant well, but it was clear he did not normally interact with children, or non-hostiles.

"Good," Special Agent Whitelaw nodded, then turned to Hodge. "You know I don't approve of this, Mr. Starkweather."

"Jace is quite the formidable opponent," Hodge gave a brief laugh, like this was an old joke they shared.

"This is not a laughing matter," Special Agent Whitelaw growled, he either didn't share the joke or he was tired of it.

"She should be safe here," Hodge said in way of apology, holding his hands up in front of him. "With all this Circle talk, Robert and Maryse have insisted on using body guards for the children. Clary will be safe with them."

Whitelaw snorted, stepping back from Hodge. "I don't give a damn about Maryse and Robert's brats. I'm concerned about this one," he pointed at me. "If this is the Circle, if this has anything to do with Jocelyn's connections to Valentine, she's the one in danger."

"You forget that Maryse and Robert where in the Cricle." Hodge looked like he really woukd have rather done anything besides remind Special Agent Whitelaw that he and his clients had been involved in the Circle. He looked like he would have rather been doing anything besides talk to Special Agent Whitelaw about anything.

"I know they cooperated, they didn't narc Valentine out, or any of the other more faithful," Whitelaw responded, his scowling deepening as he spoke. "As I remember it, you did the same thing. Turned yourself over but refused to help us catch the others."

"I was looking out for my own safety," Hodge blanched under Whitelaw's accusation, sitting back to give more space between the two of them.

"Is that why the three of you offered this deal? To prove to us that you're not part of the Circle anymore?" Whitelaw snapped. "Or is this just so that you have a whole new generation ready to go? New blood for the Circle?"

"We left the Circle," Hodge answered darkly, he might have been terrified of Whitelaw, but it seemed the looming threat of the Circle was more terrifying. "We willing turned ourselves over to you and told you what we could. None of us were high in the ranks."

"You were in Valentine's inner circle. All three of you were all."

"Valentine was manipulative, he had several circles," Hodge's eyes darkened as he spoke. "He told all of us how valuable we were to his plans. He told us that he was only trying to improve the state of the world, that we were on a divine mission. Valentine only wanted willing followers. Whoever took Jocelyn Morgenstern wants nothing to do with us because of the Circle, because this isn't about the Circle."

"How can you be so sure?"

"You said yourself. If I was part of the inner circle, I would know all about this."

Whitelaw exhaled loudly, tugging at his beard as he turned away from Hodge. "You call me, every day," he spoke directly to me. I had been given a new phone, with a brand new number. "If I haven't heard from you by seven o'clock, I will raid this house. And you will be prosecuted as part of the Circle, and your deal with the Attorney General will be worth shit," he turned to Hodge again. "Am I understood?"

"I'll make sure she calls."

Special Agent Whitelaw nodded to Hodge, then to me. He sighed as he crossed the room to the door of the parlor. He stopped before opening it though. "It's nothing personal Hodge, but this is very serious."

"I know," Hodge stood up from the arm chair he had been perched in.

"We can't go through this Circle business again. We have to take this seriously, and question everyone again. I want to believe you, and Maryse and Robert; I want to believe that you aren't part of this. That this isn't the Circle, and we're over reacting. But we can't take the chance that you're lying."

"I understand." Hodge said quietly. "I'll call Maryse and Robert. They're in London, visiting family, I'll let them know you'll need to see them."

"Thank you," Special Agent Whitelaw turned the knob and left the room.

"I hope you don't think any less of me, Clary." Hodge said once we heard the front door close. "I know we've only just met, and it was a very formal meeting at that."

"You said before you thought you knew my mom, and she was part of the Circle with you."

"I did," Hodge agreed with a bob of his head.

"That I looked like my mom, like the girl you knew."

"You do, you're the spitting image."

"Is that why you wanted me here? To protect me, incase this is the Circle?"

"Clary, this isn't the Circle, it can't be. Valentine is dead, his followers are gone or imprisoned. This is a random act, one that follows the actions of past Circle members more closely than the FBI likes. It's all coincidence."

"Then why am I here? Why are you offering this protection? And that line about the body guards for Jace and the others?"

"That's not a line. I am putting a protection detail on them, per Maryse's instructions. Jace likes to run off and pick fights. Alec trails after him to try and stop him from being too reckless. Isabelle can look after herself, but I fear that she'll get in over her head like Jace and Alec."

"And me?"

"You'll be under protection with the three of them."

"You have the authority to do that?"

"Yes, I do."

* * *

"Each of the bedrooms has a bathroom attached, please make yourself comfortable and think of this as your home," Hodge opened up the door to the room I had slept in the first night that I came to the house with Jace and the others. "I'm sure you're tired, it's been a long day."

"Thanks," I stepped into the room, taking in the size of the room as Hodge closed the door behind me.

I wasn't tired, but I was at the same time. My mind was still trying to process everything that had happened; the police at my house, the phone call, what I had overheard at Luke's, what Special Agent Whitelaw and Hodge had talked about. But I wasn't actually tired, I felt like I was running on a high, one that would never end. I had energy but didn't know what to do with it.

I paced the room, wringing my hands raw. I needed something to do. Normally I drew, but I didn't have my sketch pad, or any of my pencils. So I had to pace, there was literally nothing else there to occupy my mind in the guest bedroom of the Lightwood home.

"Hey Clary," Jace knocked while he was talking through the door. "I know that Hodge said you had a long day, maybe you did, but the thing is, we're starving," the knob started to turn, he was clearly planning on coming in regardless of whether or not I said he could. "Hodge also axed us going to Taki's, so Izzy's trying to cook."

"I thought Izzy couldn't cook," I turned at the foot of the bed, still pacing the room while I tried to figure things out.

"She can't," Jace stopped just inside of the door, still holding the knob as he watched me. The smile that had lit his face fell when he saw me pacing, "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I answered distractedly, pulling at my fingers idly. "If Izzy can't cook why is she?"

"Izzy thinks she can," Jace answered, his brow furrowing as I continued to pace. "Anyway, I need to know your take-out preferences for when she gives up and calls something in."

"You came all the way up here for that?" I stopped pacing to look at him.

"My, my room is just across the hall," he shook his head, pointing over his shoulder at the open door across the hall from mine. "I could smell the beginning of the disaster, so I wanted to make sure we ordered something you'd eat." At the mention of cooking food, I inhaled deeply. Whatever Izzy was attempting to cook; it was already turning out badly.

"Whatever you order is fine," I commented, beginning to pace again.

"Do you need something?" His eyes followed me around my circuit of the room.

"No."

"Are you sure? You're doing a lot of pacing here. You're starting to wear a path in the rug," he pointed down to the plush carpet I had walked over during the paced circuit. "And while we have the money to replace it, I don't think Maryse will like that too much."

"Sorry," I continued to walk.

"How about we go to the studio?" he suggested.

"I'm not a dancer."

"And?" he scoffed. "It's not for dance. It's a martial arts studio," he grinned. "I'm a man of action, black belt in three disciplines. Alec is a double black belt in Jujitsu and Kyūdō, and Izzy has one in Kung Fu, in particular the Northern Shaolin school of thought, and Tai Chi."

"What about you? What are your schools?" my circuit slowed partially, my anxious mind briefly distracted by Jace's presence.

"Kendo, Taekwondo, and Hung Ga Kung Fu. I'm also quite skilled in fisticuffs," his grin grew, becoming a little lopsided. "The thing is, we have this studio so that we don't pace like that."

"I'm not much for physical activities."

"Just pacing?" he cocked his brow at the question. "Then let me give you a detailed tour, show you everything. After all, you should be able to find your away around if you're going to stay here."


	15. Chapter 15

Jace showed me every room on every floor. He gave me a brief run-down as we moved from room to room in the large house. It was clear he didn't think I would care about any of it, it was just a formality. Finally, he started down the steps to the basement, grinning like an idiot.

"I saved the best for last," he said over his shoulder, leading the way down the spiral steps.

Our steps echoed dully on the iron steps as he descended to the lowest level of the Lightwood's New York home. At the bottom there was a short hallway leading to two double doors.

The studio in the basement.

The studio took up most of the basement of the house. It might have been the whole basement. One wall was comprised of floor length mirrors, another held an assortment of training pads and helmets, guards and face masks. There were six practice dummies gathered near the door, a heavy sandbag hung from the ceiling, and an arsenal of staffs and wooden weapons to training with cluttered the far corner from the door. The whole floor was padded with the same material the school used when it hosted wrestling competitions.

Jace stopped at the door, bowing his head slightly before entering. I crept in slowly after him, taking in the vastness of the room. They had a studio in the basement of their house; Jace had mentioned it before but I hadn't expected a full-blow martial arts studio. It was ridiculous, and unnecessary since New York was littered with studios for every discipline imaginable.

"Pretty nice, right?" he was standing near the gathered arsenal of a practice weapons, running his hands down the length of a wooden staff.

"It's huge," I managed to respond, still looking around in awe. "Do you really need this much space for martial arts?"

"Nah," he shook his head, finally deciding on a staff, he pulled it out and started spinning it in his hands. "But if all three of us need to vent, we defiantly need this much space."

Jace went through several forms with his staff, flashing smiles at me at every opportunity. I stood by the door, transfixed as he moved through the sequences, with every jarring halt and shouted breath, I felt my own breath catch in my throat. All too soon he came to a stop, and set his staff on the ground.

"Would you like to learn?"

I quickly shook my head. I was an artist, not in any way conditioned to do anything Jace had just done. Not to mention my ability to trip over thin air, I would kill somebody trying to do anything Jace had just showed me.

"Come on," he held his hand out, a smile brightening his face. "It's just me, and I'm a third degree black-belt," he added nonchalantly, reminding me of his awesomeness without bragging about it.

"Jace!" Alec's voice rang out of the walls. "If Izzy's cooking hasn't killed you yet, the time is nigh."

"Alec!" Izzy's voice shrieked through the walls as well, not as close to the speaker as her brother's but still clearly coming through the intercom.

"Oh boy," Jace's face blanched.

"Is her cooking really that horrible?" I had watched Jace swallow some questionable stuff at Taki's, and he inhaled any food substance that came too close. I found it hard to believe that he would be so against something that Izzy cooked for him.

"Last week, she burnt water."

"Seriously?" my mom told me I burnt water all the time. It was just a nice way of telling me to stop while I was still ahead. "It couldn't have been that bad."

"She ruined a perfectly good, mostly brand new, pan set with that stunt. Maryse will be furious when she gets home and sees it."

"How do you burn water?" I asked skeptically, doubting the validity of his claim.

"She did it," he answered shortly.

"Jace!" It was Izzy's voice again; she was yelling right next to the speaker. "I made spaghetti, it's your favorite."

"She's ruined my favorite meal," Jace groaned, his shoulders falling as he exited the studio. He bobbed his head briefly at the door before turning and starting back down the short hall way. "I'll never be able to eat spaghetti again."

Jace had intentionally skipped over the kitchen on our detailed tour of the house. I could smell the disaster beginning to take place in there as we passed it though. And I have to say, it was a billion times worse inside the kitchen.

Hodge was seated at the table, Alec was leaning against the counter near the fridge, tossing a half-emptied bottle of water back and forth in his hands. Izzy was standing over the stove, her long hair held up from her neck with chop sticks, wielding a wooden spoon.

The entire room horded a stench of skunk melding with five-day old roadkill. Izzy seemed not to notice, Alec was clearly trying not to notice. And Hodge, well, Hodge had given up on pretending not to notice it; he was holding his nose while writing something on the note pad in leather Padfolio.

Jace gagged, staggering backward when the smell assaulted us. I coughed loudly, back-peddling into the hall to get away from the smell. Izzy turned an icy glare at me.

"It's not that bad," she snapped, turning her red spaghetti sauce stained spoon at us. "See, Alec doesn't mind at all."

"Alec is breathing through his mouth," Jace muttered out of the side of his mouth.

"He is not!" Izzy snapped again, stalking across the kitchen toward Jace. She hit him roughly on the shoulder once he was in range. "It's spaghetti, you love spaghetti."

"Not when it's crispy, blackened, and smelling of the long deceased," Hodge looked up briefly. "I thought you'd gone to bed," he added seeing me standing behind Jace.

I shook my head, attempting to enter the kitchen again.

"I was giving her a tour of the house," Jace took the spoon from Izzy and approached the stove slowly.

He poked at the so-called spaghetti in the pans uncovered on the stove top with the spoon. Something hissed loudly from one of the pans as steamed billowed up at his elbow. Jace jumped back, turning the spoon to face the hissing pan.

"Iz, I hate to tell you this," Jace started slowly, inching his way back toward the stove top. "But I'm going to have to call this."

"You haven't even tried it yet," Izzy stalked back across the kitchen, taking her spoon from Jace.

"I don't—is something burning?" we all inhaled deeply, taking in the newly found horrid aroma. Something was burning.

"It's probably the garlic toast," Alec offered setting his bottle of water down.

"My toast!" Izzy started smacking Jace back from the stove, pulling to oven door open as she did so. Smoke rolled out of the oven. "Alec, why didn't you remind me?"

Alec reached across the front of fridge for the phone. "How about Chinese?" he asked instead of answering his sister.

"I made supper!" Izzy shrieked, digging through the mess covering the counter top to find pot holders so she could get the burnt toast out of the oven.

"We haven't had Chinese in a while?" Alec continued, dialing a memorized number before anyone could respond for or against the Chinese.

"Alec, put down the phone," Izzy turned her wooden spoon on her brother and started after him.

"Stop her!" Jace lunged after Izzy, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her back just before she wrapped her fingers around the phone in Alec's hand.

Izzy kicked at Jace, smacking at his hands with the wooden spoon while still trying to get the phone from her brother.

Jace hauled her further back, closer to the stove. Smoke still rolled from the opened oven, one of the pans started hissing and billowing steam again. Jace started, twisting Izzy away from the stove to place himself between her and the seemingly-threatening appliance.

"Oh, for the love of God! Jace! Isabelle!" Hodge snapped, turning in his chair to face the pair of them. "You are teenagers! Act your ages!"

"But," Izzy started to protest, just as one of the pan exploded. Red-black burnt sauce leapt in the air, splattering Jace, Izzy, Alec, and a good part of the ceiling.

Jace dropped Izzy, snatching at the pan lids littering the counter and slamming it down on the pan that exploded. "It's trying to kill us!"

"It's not alive!"

"It's back from the dead!" Jace slammed another lid on a pot. "I've told you a million times you can't cook!"

"Yes I can," Izzy protested instantly, her cheeks reddening in anger.

"Isabelle!" Hodge shouted again. This got everyone's attention, it seemed Hodge was not one to yell. Especially more than once in a single conversation. "You tried and failed yet again. And this is a miserable failure, one of your best by far," he motioned toward the mess Jace was attempting to control by covering with the crockery lids. "But we are hungry, and we need sleep because we are all due on the set in the morning."

"Chinese is on its way," Alec returned the phone to the charger and looked over at the stove. "Iz, I told you to turn everything off when we paged Jace."

It was like Alec had completely missed the fight between Jace and Izzy. It was like Alec had missed the exploding sauce, which was splattered over half of his face and chest. Alec was immune to everything that had just happened in the kitchen, but this was probably an everyday occurrence for him, mediating the arguments between his younger siblings. He seemed exhausted by it.

"It was still cooking," she protested, frowning at her disastrous attempt to cook spaghetti. Or what she could still see, since Jace had covered several of the pans to keep them from splattering all over everything too.

"It was still burning, you mean," Jace waved some of the smoke away from him with one of the pan lids. "I told you I had to call it. Time of death: ten minutes ago."

"Jace," Hodge said warningly, turning back to his work.

Jace rolled his eyes at the back of Hodge's head.

Alec sighed, shooing Jace and Izzy away from the stove. Meticulously, Alec turned everything off, and shut the oven. Then he cracked open a window to air the room. "Maybe next time, okay Iz?" he clapped his sister on the shoulder and took the spoon from her at the same time.

* * *

The Chinese arrived twenty minutes later, just as we had managed to scrape the burnt remains of Izzy's attempt at cooking out of the cook wear. Since the kitchen still smelled of the disaster, we ate in the living room, watching bad infomercials. Hodge sat with us just long enough to eat, then vanished to his office.

It felt like no time had passed before Alec stood, reminded us we had to get up early, and left. Izzy curled next to me on the couch, resting her head on my shoulder while we watched an extended infomercial about detergents. Jace lounged in a chair across the room, pretending not to stare at me.

I had just started nodding off when Izzy pulled me to my feet. We stumbled up the stairs together, and she left me at my bedroom door. Across the hall from my door, Jace's was sitting ajar.

For a brief moment, I saw him pass the door way shirtless. I smiled, opening my door and entering my room. I fell into my bed, still thinking about shirtless Jace sleeping across the hall from me.


	16. Chapter 16

It was summer. I had to keep reminding myself that it was summer. It didn't feel like summer when I still had to get up early. It didn't feel like summer, but it was still summer. I could still do what I wanted, no school, no homework, little responsibility.

I was woken up when Hodge pounded on my bedroom door, I swear that man doesn't sleep, reminding me that we had other things to do besides sleep. "Come on Clary, we have to leave soon."

We were still bodyguard-less, they would meet us on set, according to Hodge. So he was acting as our temporary guard, which meant the four of us had to leave together. No pit-stop at Taki's for Jace, no detour to a store for Izzy, and Alec had to wait to get to the set because he was bogged down with us. And I was moving slowly, because it was summer; and I was not prepared to be staying up all night and then getting up early.

When I finally emerged from my room, Izzy was strutting down the hall in heels and a glittery dress. She had done her hair in amazingly perfect curls, and looked like she was about to take the runway for Fashion Week. It was six in the morning, and she looked ready for a night on the town.

"That's what you're wearing to the set?" she arched her brow, looking me over carefully.

I looked down at myself, the slept-in clothes, ratted Converse All-Stars, and I knew my hair was probably a wreck since I had just tied it up in a messy bun. I was a slob next to Izzy on a good day, but I was really slumming at that moment. Slumming while hanging out with the Lightwoods, I really shouldn't be allowed near famous people.

I shrugged in response to her question, "yeah, I guess."

"That's what you wore yesterday," she clicked her tongue. "You would think Hodge would have the sense to get you some clothes when he brought you here."

"Um," I looked down at myself again. "Does it matter?"

"What?" Izzy scoffed, looking aghast. "You are living with the Lightwooods. _The Lightwoods._ Of course it matters!" Izzy took a firm hold of my wrist and started pulling me down the hall toward her room.

"Iz, we don't have time," Alec's door opened as we passed it. I doubt he had been listening in, and it was possible that he was just taking a guess at what his sister was doing, but it was still weird that he seemed to know what we were up to. "We have to be on set—"

"We're going to have to make time, Alec," Izzy threw her bedroom door open. "This is a fashion emergency!"

Izzy pushed me in her room, which looked like something had puked glitter on everything. Her whole room was pink and neon, most of her clothes were littering the floor and had some form of glitter embedded in it. It seemed to match Izzy pretty well, and it was the polar opposite from me.

"Sit," Izzy pushed me on the bed and began digging through her closet. "I have something that'll fit you."

"I don't think," I shifted some of her clothes on the bed, so that I was sitting on the neon pink comforter instead of one of her designer dresses. "None of this really seems like me," I finished lamely, eyeing what I could see of her wardrobe.

Izzy emerged from her closet, laughing. "Clary, you're going to be seen, with me. And I have a reputation."

I knew that. Of course I knew that. She was Isabelle Lightwood! But even then, it hadn't been my decision to stay with her. I would have gladly stayed with Simon, where my slept-in clothes passed for okay, and I could sleep in. And I wasn't sure anything of Izzy's would look any good on me.

"Yeah," I sighed, slouching back on the bed.

"Here," Izzy pulled something off a hanger in the back of her closet and threw it at me. "It's a little small on me, so it should fit you."

The dress landed on top of my head. I huffed, pulling it down to look at it. It was short.

Incredibly short.

"Izzy," I held the dress up between us. "This isn't really my style."

Izzy frowned, giving the dress half a minute's careful consideration. "It could be, it could go with your shoes," she smiled, pointing at my old Converse. "It's a good thing they're black high-tops, those can be dressed up easily."

I looked down at my shoes. They wouldn't go with the dress. My shoes went with jeans, shorts, and oversized t-shirt dresses with shorts underneath. Converse shoes didn't go with the thin, little black dress that Izzy had thrown at me. I had never owned anything that might possibly go with the dress Izzy had thrown at me.

"Put it on," Izzy leaned back against her vanity, folding her arms over her chest as she waited. I hated to tell her that she would be waiting a long time, but she was going to be waiting a long time. "We haven't got all day."

As if on cue, Hodge started beating on Izzy's door. "I don't care what kind of fashion emergency you think you're having, you are due on the set, and we need to leave."

"We'll be out in a minute!" Izzy called in response, giving me an expectant wide-eyed look.

The dress was short. According to Izzy was a little longer on me than it was supposed to be, but to me it felt way too short. And my Convers All-Stars did not go with it, even though Izzy insisted that they did. I hugged my arms around myself and trailed after Izzy down the hall toward the steps, very aware of every inch of exposed flesh.

Hodge was waiting in the entry way, tapping his foot and staring at his watch. Alec was leaning against the small table by the door, staring intently at his phone. And Jace was sitting on the banister, brooding while waiting on us.

All three of them stared as Izzy led the way down the steps. Normally, they would have all been staring at Izzy, it made sense since she was seriously beautiful. But I knew that this time, it was me they were staring at.

I wanted to hide. To cover my face and duck behind something. I wanted to do anything to make them not stare at me. But I was on the stairs, and there was nothing between me and them besides Izzy. And all Izzy wanted to do was parade me around and show off the clothes she put me in.

Jace's jaw slackened as he watched me descend the steps. His golden eyes scanned me slowly, starting on my shoes and working his way up to my messy bun. The corner of his lip twitched, curling in a small smile as he pushed himself off the banister.

"Isn't she pretty?" Izzy held her arms up, displaying me like I was a prize on a game show.

"Yeah," Jace answered, his eyes locking on mine. I felt my cheeks burn under his gaze. He was staring at me, and I was barely dressed in something Izzy didn't want anymore. "Except her hair," he added when I came level with him on the steps.

"It's a mess bun," Izzy scoffed, "It's supposed to look like that."

Jace's smile grew a little wider, his eyes still locked on mine. Before I realized what he was doing, Jace reached up and started pulling my hair free. My hair fell down around my shoulders in loose curls, I felt my cheeks burn even hotter.

"You should wear your hair down, though. It looks better."

I chewed on my lip, trying not to look at Jace but wanting to look at him at the same time. I hated wearing my hair down, it got in my face and my mouth and was just more trouble than it was worth. But I was tempted to leave it down.

Jace smiled, brushing some of the wilder strands back and tucking them behind my ear.

Somewhere behind him, I heard Alec cough loudly. I could sense Izzy beaming a smile in our direction. Jace's smile grew a little brighter as his eyes held mine.

"We have to go," Hodge spoke. Jace straightened, I hadn't realized until that moment that he had been leaning in toward me. "Now," Hodge nearly barked.

"We're coming," Jace winked at me before turning to leave the house.

I took a deep breath, trying to settle my heart and stop blushing. I stumbled down the rest of the steps and out the door behind Izzy, Alec, and Jace. Hodge closed the door behind me and ushered me into the front passenger seat of a town car. He slid in behind the wheel, and we left for the set.

I could still feel Jace staring at me. I could still sense Izzy's beaming smile. And I could tell that Alec was annoyed.

I briefly wondered if I had done something to piss him off. If I had done something to him in the short amount of time I'd known him, to make him hate me. I wondered if Alec just hated people, and I was the unfortunate person to be caught with him while he was being angry.

Whatever it was, it helped me get my head back together. Alec's constant unhappiness about my presence helped my not blush while thinking about Jace playing with my hair. It also helped me not talk while Hodge drove us to the set.

* * *

There were three guards waiting at the set for us when we arrived, a whole ten minutes early. Robert and Maryse had hired someone to guard their three children, and I had somehow been wrapped into it. I didn't have a personal guard, probably because they didn't think I would do anything ridiculous or unexpected. More like they thought I would just hang around with Jace, Alec, and Izzy because they were famous and I was privileged enough to be there.

All three of them were over six feet tall, with thick corded muscles that bulged out from beneath tight fitting shirts. Two of them were bald with thick tattoos curling around their skulls. The third had long luscious locks of golden hair.

He was introduced as Marcus, Jace's body guard.

Jace narrowed his eyes in suspicion, stalking around Marcus. Marcus growled in response. It seemed they had an understanding, because neither of them spoke or made another noise for the rest of the meeting.

The other two were Warren and Brutus, severing interchangeably as Izzy and Alec's body guards. It seemed that Jace needed special attention, while Alec and Izzy were more laid back in their activities and therefore had interchangeable guards. I was a little confused why a pianist/stuntman/actor would need more protection, but who was I to say anything against it.

"Where's Clary's guard?" Izzy had her arm wrapped through mine, as if claiming me as her own before Jace had the chance to do so. She needed a girl-friend and I seemed to fit the bill, so Jace was out of luck. "You told Special Agent What's-His-Face that she'd have a guard too."

"Your parents seem to think that a fourth guard isn't necessary," Hodge was busy with a PDA, making notes about something while half-listening to anything we might have had to say.

"But you told Whitelaw that I'd be safe," I fidgeted slightly, trying to keep the impossibly short skirt from riding up while we were talking. I was only making it worse, but in my mind it was helping. "You told him that Maryse and Robert were taking this seriously." It felt weird to refer to two people I had never met by their first names, but it would have been weirder to call them Mr. and Mrs. Lightwood.

"They are taking it seriously," Hodge granted me a brief glance.

"You haven't told them that Clary's staying with us," Jace turned his narrowed glare from Marcus to Hodge. "They don't know we have a guest in need of a guard because of some obscure connection with the Circle."

"There are three highly trained body guards," Hodge responded off-handedly, as if that was more than enough man-power to watch four teenagers. It was probably more than enough, actually, like two too many. "You'll be safe enough."

"Special Agent Whitelaw won't like this," Alec muttered, pulling out his phone to look at the display screen. He did that a lot, checked his phone. As far as I could tell, there was never anything incoming, so he must have just been checking to look busy. "You told him she'd have a guard."

"And so long as she's with one of you, she will," Hodge's phone started ringing, he answered holding his finger up to silence us. "Hello, I'm glad you called."

"Apparently this conversation's over," Alec sighed, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and walking off toward the dressing rooms. Brutus stalked after him.

Jace glared at Hodge for another minute, then turned his attention back to Marcus. "Are you going to talk, or are you a silent shadow?" No response. "Fine," Jace started off in another direction, Marcus trailing after him.

Izzy snorted, turning on her heel and stalking away, pulling me along behind her. "It's just like him, ignoring us for the next big thing." She pinched her lips, her fingers digging into my arm. "Refusing to talk to us about anything."

"He's just your agent," I tried to console her. It wasn't like he was family, like he was a neglectful father. He was just someone hired to promote them, and get them jobs.

"Hodge is family," Izzy responded curtly. "He went to school with mom and dad, he was in the Circle with them, he lives in our house, all our houses. He lies to mom and dad too, about us and what he has planned for us, but he doesn't actually give a damn about us. We're just his meal ticket until something better comes along."

"Like what?"

"Whoever he's on the phone with," Izzy answered crisply. "Because he used to always be on the phone like that for us."

I opened my mouth to reply but had nothing to say.

"He just doesn't give a damn about us. Not anymore."


	17. Chapter 17

On Friday I managed to give the guards the slip. It was easier than I thought it would be. They were guarding the Lightwoods, if I was around them I was under their protection. If I wandered off, they were under no obligation to follow me.

So I left the set. Literally just walked off the set with so much as a word to anyone. I texted Simon and asked him to meet me at Java Jones. He responded instantly that he would be there, no doubt he had been waiting for me to send some form of word to retaliate against this tragic injustice.

He was stationed near the door when I came in. He had a hoodie on despite that it was early summer, with the hood pulled up over his head to shadow his face and a pair of cheap sunglasses sitting over top of his regular glasses.

"You look ridiculous," I commented, sitting across from him at the high-table he had claimed, feeling slightly self-conscious in the clothes I had borrowed from Izzy. Izzy's clothes made it clear that she was very confident in her body and her self

"I'm not technically supposed to be seeing you," Simon answered quietly, leaning forward as he did so. "If the cops see us together, you'll be shipped upstate, I'll be shipped off somewhere too."

"They're not going to do anything," I scoffed, though I did shrink down a little, letting some of my hair fall down in my face.

"How did you slip the bodyguards?"

"I just walked off, they're not my detail," I answered. "I don't think any of them will notice I'm gone anyway. Jace and Alec are shooting some big scene today and Izzy's getting her wardrobe altered for where she managed to lose three inches off her waist since they made the clothes for her."

"So you just walked off? Won't Hodge or someone freak out on you?"

"Probably," I shrugged. "If anything Special Agent Whitelaw will bite Hodge's head off for not assigning me a guard detail." I laughed a little at the comment.

In my time with the Lightwoods, I had realized that Jace did what he wanted, Alec tried to keep the repercussions to a minimum, and Izzy was a chaotic neutral. Hodge was technically in charge, but he had as much control over their actions as Obi-Wan Kenobi did over Anakin Skywalker in _Revenge of the Sith._ Which is to say not a whole lot.

"I'll get back before they notice anything," I continued looking over my shoulder at the door. Where there cops out there watching us meet? Where they calling Special Agent Whitelaw so he could come drag me off to some secure safe-house in the middle of nowhere until this Circle issue was resolved? If the Circle issue was ever resolved.

"So what are we doing? Some deep seeded plot for justice?" Simon removed the sunglasses, folding them up in the pocket of the hoodie.

"I need to get the mail form the house," I answered, checking the time on my phone.

"That's the secret, covert mission we're using as the first step in our rebellion against the FBI and their ridiculous, whatever it is they're doing here?" Simon waved his hand in a circle over the table. "Because I think we're risking a lot here, for getting the mail."

"Simon, I'm going to tell you something. And it's going to explain why getting the mail is the first step in the rebellion against the Feds and this complete bullshit."

"You have my attention," Simon leaned in closer to me, his brow arched in curiosity.

"The other day, when Jace came in here and I ran out after that phone call."

"What about it?"

"The phone call was about my mom, the guy said proof of life would be in the mail today, along with the name of the thing he wants in exchange."

"So this is a ransom? Clary, why didn't you tell the police, or Whitelaw?"

"He said not too," I defended myself. I didn't expect Simon to fully understand my actions, but I needed him to at least know why. He would tell me if I was out of line, he would try to ground me, which is what I needed. "Simon, I have to see what it is he wants before I tell the cops about it. If I can get it to him, this'll all be over."

"What if it's something you don't have?" Simon asked seriously. "What if it's something you can't get. What then Clary?"

"I know what they want Simon," I sighed, diving into the story about what I overheard at Luke's. I told him about what Pangborn and Blackwell had said about Valentine and the Circle, and how Valentine knew about me, then back to my phone call to Luke when he told me that he had set the place on fire so that none of them would know about me. I told Simon everything that had happened that week.

"So this is the Circle, like everyone's afraid of," Simon breathed looking down at the table. "And they know about you."

"Simon, don't freak out on me, please. I have to get the proof of life, and see if I can find the cup Valentine wants in exchange for my mom."

"Clary," Simon sighed, his hand reaching up to brush his hood back. "I've looked into the Circle stuff; your mom threw a lot of them under the bus. They could do something to you."

"I know what my mom did," I had also looked into the Circle stuff while staying with the Lightwoods. "I know the Circle is dangerous, but they already took my mom. They've taken Luke, and who know what else they've done. But if I can get my mom back, I'm going to."

"Without help from the police?"

"He said not to involve the police. I think this guy, whoever he is, just wants the cup."

"You said that Pangborn said these people would kill you and your mom once they got the cup."

"I'm sure they weren't being serious. You can't just kill people." It wasn't like this was a movie, where the Mafia just offed people. This was real life, and in real life there was none of that over-the-top dramatics about concrete shoes and fire-fights.

"Oh you can actually." I flinched. "Especially when they sneak off." I sighed, giving Simon my best apologetic look.

"How did he know you would be here?" Simon glared over my shoulder at Jace, who was no doubt still dressed as Will Herondale, the guy he played in the new movie. "I thought they were in training or something."

"He was," I answered turning back to face Jace. He was still dressed as Will Herondale, and he seemed to love the chance to portray the "rebellious bad-boy" in public. Maybe he was a rebellious bad-boy for real but the Lightwoods made him behave; but he looked entirely too comfortable in those dark jeans and worn leather jacket.

"See the thing is, we're responsible for Clary's safety," he pointed out the door to where is burly body guard was acting as a bouncer for Java Jones. "And we take that very seriously, don't we Marcus?"

Marcus grunted, which was the closest I had come to hearing him speak in the two days that he had been around.

"See, he's very serious about his job," Jace continued as if Marcus had given a more lengthy answer.

"Sounds like it," Simon rolled his eyes.

"So, I overheard you talking about this Circle business," Jace slid into one of the remaining chairs at the table. "I'm coming with you to the drop."

"There's no drop," Simon exclaimed, turned wide eyes at Jace. If Simon was anything, he was definitely not 'cool'.

"I'm just getting the mail," I said at the same time.

"Details," Jace waved the comments aside. "You can go anywhere so long as a body guard is around. These guys are good, trained like the Secret Service people for the First Family, and since I have one, you can go to the house if I go with you."

"She doesn't need you, or your body guards."

"Special Agent Whitelaw begs to differ," Jace leveled a glare at Simon. "So does the entirety of the NYPD, and a large group of guys with the FBI."

"They're all over reacting," I said. "There's nothing happening out there, they're jumping at shadows."

"You can't fool me, I just overheard this entire conversation. I heard you talk about Luke, the call with the man who took your mom, and your plan to not tell the FBI."

"So what, are you going to tell?"

"Of course not," Jace scoffed. "Do I look like a rat?"

"Don't you have to be on set?" I asked.

"Yes, but I also have issues with authority," Jace flashed a sly smile. "And I want to know more about this Circle, actual knowledge, not just the bullshit, edited accounts for the news reporters."

I sighed. Jace would mess this whole thing up. I knew he would, it would be weird for someone and his body guard to be at my house with me. It would draw all kinds of attention to the fact that I was where I wasn't supposed to be. But if the house was under surveillance, having Jace and Marcus would make it a little better.

"Why do you care?" Simon asked while I debated the possible pros of Jace coming along.

"Hodge was in this thing. Maryse and Robert were in it. My dad was in it," Jace answered. "I want to know what it was really about."

"Then ask Hodge," Simon spat.

"Hodge won't talk about it," Jace answered. "Maryse and Robert are holed up in London so they can't be connected, and my dad is dead. This seems like the best option."

"You're a maniac."

"Possibly," Jace laughed bitterly. "But you're thinking of doing something stupid, and I'm a trained martial artist with a personal body guard."

"That doesn't mean you can come." Simon folded his arms defiantly. "Tell him Clary."

"Jace," I sighed. Simon was going to hate me. "Do you think you can lose Marcus?"

"I know I can," he smiled happily.


	18. Chapter 18

For someone famous, Jace is really good at going unnoticed when he wants to. He pulled up the hood of his jacket, donned Simon's sunglasses, shrunk down on himself and walked out of Java Jones with a group of guys dressed in Delta Chi apparel. Marcus had no idea.

Simon slipped out a little later while I left out the back door.

We met a few blocks down the street and made a quick retreat to my house. It was still roped off, and still hard for me to look at. We sat on the stoop of my neighbor's house, a witch calling herself Madame Dorothea. She offered to tell fortunes and read palms, she also gave tarot readings and would claim have a wide variety of magic potions. To me she was just a crazy old lady, who thankfully never came outside, so it was safe to sit on her porch steps.

"Wow," Jace whistled looking at the ruins of my house. "Someone really lit the place up."

"It was Luke," I answered. "I thought you said you were listening in on us at Java Jones?"

"I did listen, but I thought it was like smoke damage, and a scorched yard, maybe. But he was trying to burn the whole place down," Jace explained trying to avert his gaze from the burned ruins.

"To protect me," I looked down the street. I had never really paid much attention to the street, the cars people drove and their routines. "Simon, do you see anything suspicious?" It's never been something I thought would matter, what someone drove, when they left for work and got home. Maybe it was something Simon had noticed.

"Besides three teenagers on Madame Dorothea's steps?" Simon asked, looking around as well. "No, but they would be in undercover cars." Of course Simon hadn't noted those things either, he was under the same delusion as me: we lived in a protected bubble.

"And if the house is being watched, they would have gotten this proof of life you're after," Jace pulled his sunglasses down his nose as he looked down the street, his golden eyes flicking over everything quickly. "And I can see undercover cops," he pushed the glasses up again as he turned to face the other direction. "One down this way too."

"So if the house is being watched, they would have seen if someone dropped something off at my house," I followed Jace's gaze to the unmarked police car. "Would they still have done it?"

"Probably," Jace commented, diverting his attention to some kids playing across the street. "If this is Circle business, which I'm positive we've all established it is, they'd hardly let something like cops stop their plans."

"We haven't established anything," Simon instantly challenged Jace. Would they ever just get along?

"Guys, could you please stop this pointless fighting?" I asked, looking down the street to see if something or someone would have my proof of life. "I mean, seriously. This is so stupid."

"He started it," Jace squared his shoulders as he pointed accusingly at Simon.

"I did not," I slapped Simon and Jace quickly to stop their fight before they said something revealing. There was someone coming up the walk.

"Morning, kids," a mailman greeted as he came up the walk to Madame Dorothea's.

"Morning," we chorused quietly. He was not our normal postman, I didn't recognize him, and apparently neither did Simon.

"Here you go, Clary." He handed a small stack of mail to me, the top letter had my name on it, but no address.

I inhaled sharply. The man dressed as the postman was one of the men who had been in Luke's house. The man delivering the proof of life was Pangborn.

"Give this to the Madame, would you?" Pangborn winked as he turned away from us.

"That's not your mailman," Jace commented, watching the imposter walk away.

"Yea, I know that," I responded, handing Simon the letter for me as I stood up. "We got what we need, now let's get out of here."

"How did you know that?" Simon asked Jace while I dropped Madame Dorothea's mail in her box.

"He's one of the men who killed my father."

* * *

"That was possibly the dumbest thing you've ever done. Do you realize that? Hodge is taking a lot of crap right now from FBI because of this, we're all suspects of being in the middle of this Circle shit, and you do that? You gave the guard the slip? to go to a crime scene!"

Alec took a breath, the first one he had taken in a long line of repeated rants about our actions for the day. Jace was failing at looking chastised by the lecture, I could still see his smug smile as he hunched his shoulders and looked down at the table between himself and Alec. I was trying not to fidget as Alec half-yelled at us.

"And you brought him in here?" Alec pointed over at Simon, who had refused to go home after we left Madame Dorothea's place. "How many fans are you going to allow to traipse through our home Jace? How many times are we going to have to have this conversation? You're putting us all at risk."

"By having him in here?" Jace balked, all pretense of being ashamed of his actions vanishing. "He's not Circle, his not nearly cool enough to even be confused with being in a gang, much less a Mafia Family!"

"And he's my friend," I added indignantly.

"You don't get to speak," Alec didn't turn to look at me directly, but he did hold his hand up in my face. "You snuck away, you caused this mess."

"I didn't sneak anywhere," I protested, smacking his hand away from me. "I walked out the door, no one tired stop me."

"You shouldn't have done that!" Alec snapped, turning to face me and slamming his hands down on the table with an open palm. "Do you still not realize what Hodge is trying to prove here? Do you not realize what it looks like when you just walk off? How that reflects on me and Izzy, and Jace?"

"What she does has no effect on me," Jace quickly interjected, folding his arms over his chest. "I did what I wanted."

"I know you did! You always do, for as long as I've known you, and God as my witness, it's going to land you in deeper than you can manage one day Jace."

"Doubtful," Jace scoffed sliding down in his chair.

Alec sighed, straightening up and turning away from us as he did so. "God help me," he muttered brushing his black hair out of his face. "What was so important that you idiots had to go to the house?"

"This," Simon lay the unopened letter on the table. "It's supposed to be the proof of life."

"Is it?"

"We haven't opened it yet," I answered, looking at the letter with a mix of caution and excitement. "We didn't want to be caught in the neighborhood by the cops."

"I'm sure they noted you visited," Alec picked the letter up. "It's not very thick," he commented more to himself than to anyone else. "Are you going to join us Izzy?"

I should have expected it. Alec, Izzy, and Jace were never far apart. They did everything together, literally everything. They ate together, trained together, worked together, and if it was possible I'm sure they would all share the same room so they could talk while they were falling asleep. I had never seen anything like it, Simon and Rebecca weren't that close, none of my others friends with siblings were as close as Jace and the Lightwoods either.

Izzy threw the door open with such force that it slammed against the wall and echoed dully through the room. She strode in with the click of heels on the hardwood floors, trying entirely too hard not to look embarrassed for being called out. "You take all the fun out of things, Alec," Izzy pouted, flipping her hair over her shoulder as she joined us at the dining room table.

"Shut up," Alec dropped in a chair across from me, still looking over the envelope from Madame Dorothea's.

"Why are you so fancy tonight, Iz?" Jace asked, turning his attention fully on Izzy, who was dressed to impress, especially by her standards. "Got a hot date?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," she answered, gracefully lowering herself in the chair beside Alec. "But I might have to change that," her dark eyes alighted on Simon. "Who's your friend Clary?"

"Simon," Simon answered, his cheeks flushing. Simon had been crushing on Isabelle Lightwood for several years, since the first time her name went up in lights. "Simon Lewis."

"Charming," Izzy smiled coyly, folding her fingers beneath her chin. "So what's in the letter, Alec?"

"What's your hot date Iz?" Jace asked again, studiously ignoring Alec as he continued to turn the letter in his hands.

"I got invited to see Magnus Bane's new gallery with Meliorn tonight," Izzy answered. "It's a group invite, up to six people," she arched her brow at Alec as she spoke, clearly aiming the comment at her elder brother.

"Magnus Bane's new gallery?" Jace scoffed. "That's the best your 'too-cool-to-be-bothered' mightier-than-thou boy-toy can do?"

"Magnus Bane's parties are to die for Jace," Izzy shot a momentary glare at Jace. "And even if it's in a stuffy art gallery, the party will be the talk of the city for weeks."

"If you say so," Jace waved the comment aside, and deciding nothing exciting was coming from Izzy, turned to Alec. "Are you going to open it or not?"

"It's not his to open," Simon took the letter from Alec, and handed it to me. "Go on Clary, it's your letter."

I frowned taking the letter, and turning it over slowly.

I had feared what would come in the mail that whole week, and now that I had the letter, I was afraid to open it. What if there was not proof of life? What if there was just a photo of my mother, dead in an alley somewhere? What if there was nothing in the envelop at all?

"She's too scared to open it," Izzy smirked. "Poor thing."

"I'm not," I ripped the letter open, pulling out a 3x6 photo of my mother holding a newspaper. There was also a note scrawled on the back. _Bring us the cup._

"Well, that was anti-climactic," Jace sighed, slouching back in his chair. "Moving on, I think we should go to that party."

"Why?"

"I think we all need a little distraction," Jace smiled at Alec. "Come on, it'll be fun."


	19. Chapter 19

"Private party," the bouncer tried to turn Izzy and Meliorn aside, casting the rest of us dark looks.

Honestly, Izzy and Meliorn were the only ones who looked like they would be going to a high-class society function. Jace was dressed nicely, having changed into fresh clothes and showering. I was still borrowing Izzy's clothes and felt super self-conscious as I nearly tripped in her heels. Simon however, was the just in his well-worn faded jeans and a borrowed shirt form Jace. And then there was Alec, who literally looked like he rolled out of bed to come to this party, and didn't care that he looked that rough.

"We have an invitation," Meliron sneered at the bouncer. I wasn't sure what it was exactly that Meliron did. Jace had said he was an activist of some kind, and acted like the rest of the world was beneath him. What Izzy saw in him, I'll never know. "I'm a friend of Magnus."

"Of course you are, we're all friends of Magnus'," the bouncer sneered at us, his cold gaze lingering over Simon in his borrowed shirt, then me in the ill-fitting clothes from Izzy, and finally on our three highly trained body guards. "But this is a private event."

"And we have an invitation," Izzy stepped away from Meliron, only a little though, to pull the invitation from her clutch. "Special guests of Magnus Bane, for his new art gallery."

"Not interested," the bouncer waved the offered invitation aside. "You have any idea how many friends of Magnus, and special guests I turn aside a night? I don't care what fancy bit of paper you have there. You're not on my list, you're not getting through this door," he jabbed at the door behind him with a thumb, after rapping his knuckles on the clipboard. His clipboard didn't have anything on it, by the way, he was literally just holding an empty clipboard.

"Oh, come now," a voice drawled from the doorway, "It's a party, Arlo. Everyone's invited."

"Mr. Bane, sir," the bouncer, Arlo, inclined his head, turning back to the doorway. The host of the party was standing there in a t-shirt with a bow-tie graphic on it and a pair of boxers. He was holding a wine glass, half-full of champagne, and wore sunglasses on top of his spiked and glittered night-black hair. "I was trying to keep the numbers down sir."

"I don't care about the numbers," Magnus Bane descended the steps, waving his champagne around almost gracefully. "So long as they're not trying to pick a fight," he eyed Jace cautiously, as if he was the greatest threat to the peacefulness of the party, "They can come in and enjoy the artwork."

"Of course, Mr. Bane, sir," the bouncer stepped aside to let us pass, though he stilleyed our guards wearily. "Right this way."

"You'll have to excuse Arlo, he takes his job entirely too seriously," Magnus bowed us through the door of the art gallery. "Meliron, I hadn't realized you taken to hanging out with children," he continued on the same breath.

"These aren't children, Magnus," Meliron cast a sideways glance at everyone except Izzy. "These are the Lightwooods."

"I know who they are," Magnus cast his gaze over us collectively, lingering on Jace and then Alec. "And they are children, both physically and career wise. I don't believe we've been formally introduced," he offered his hand to Alec, a mischievous smile playing at his lips.

"Alexander Lightwood," Alec answered, taking Magnus' hand firmly. "And these are,"

"I don't care about the rest of them," Magnus' smile grew as he turned away from us. "Except the little red head," he continued. "If she could come with me, the rest of you can enjoy the party."

Magnus walked away, holding his champagne aloft as he did so. I moved to follow him, only to be stopped by Jace, and Marcus. Jace grabbed my arm to stop me from going on without him, Marcus moved to intercept me in the same instant. It seemed Marcus had decided to take watching me a little more seriously after I ditched him twice in a single day.

"You think it's a good idea to go alone?" Jace asked quietly, looking down the hall out our host.

"I may not be a third degree black belt, but I can look after myself," I pulled my arm free of his grip and cast a glare up at Marcus, demanding him to move aside with a venomous glare.

"Clary," Simon moved up beside Jace, "I'll go with you."

"No, Simon." I couldn't turn Jace down but let Simon go. Jace would have been the better option for this, he was used to people like Magnus. It had to be fair, to both of them. "I can look after myself." I cast another look at Marcus, daring him to challenge my claim.

"Come on Simon," Izzy took him by the arm, locking hers around his elbow. "Let's go see what the big deal about this art is," she pulled Simon in the building, the opposite direction Magnus had gone, with Meliron on her other arm and Warren trailing behind them.

"Come on Jace," Alec started after Izzy. "There's no point in wasting the whole night."

Jace sighed, looking between me and the hall Magnus had gone down. "Are you sure you don't want me to come?"

"Go with Alec," I forced myself to smile at him. "I can take care of a mostly drunk frat-boy."

"If he tries anything," Jace started Marcus cracked his knuckles threateningly.

"He won't," I didn't know Magnus, but I knew he wasn't going to do anything. He had bought my mother's art; like Hodge, he must have pinned me as Jocelyn's daughter, he wasn't going to try anything. Why would he with me anyway, I wasn't pretty, I wasn't worth all that effort.

"Clary," Marcus spoke for the first time since his employment with the Lightwoods.

"I can handle it," I answered again, leaving no room for argument. "Go on Jace, look at the art work. I'll catch up with you when I'm done."

Jace sighed again, and slowly turned away. Marcus cast me a suspicious and protective look all rolled into one, motioned that he was still watching, even if I couldn't see him, and then started after Jace. I waited until they had vanished around a corner with Alec and Brutus before turning to find where Magnus had gone.

* * *

Magnus was sprawled in a large mushroom chair, his legs crossed with the champagne glass balanced on his knee. His hazel colored eyes lit up when I entered the room. He smiled, motioning me into a chair beside him.

"That red hair, is truly stunning," he offered me his champagne glass. "I haven't seen the like since I met a young Jocelyn Fairchild, at one of these parties. But then she married that brute, his name was very deceptive," Magnus tilted his head to the side as he thought about Valentine. "Valentine," he frowned at the name as though it left a bad taste in his mouth, "But then again Saint Valentine's story is riddled with not nice things. He did it for love, of course. But I can't say the same about our Valentine," he laughed, throwing his head back as he did so.

"So, I knew you'd show up, the minute I saw that report on the news about Jocelyn Morgenstern, I knew her daughter would show up." He beamed happily, clearly pleased with his deductive guesses.

"How did you know she had a daughter?"

Magnus' face lit a little more up as he bounced out of his chair, "I've known you your whole life!" he announced happily. "I've watched you grow up, ever since you were a little thing with red pigtails and flowery dresses." He heald his hand out to approximate my height when he first met me.

I frowned. I had never met Magnus Bane before. I hadn't heard of Magnus until Elaine told me about him buying all my mother's art. If I hadn't met him, how could he know me?

"Oh that face, you don't even remember me," he didn't seem upset about it, a smile was still plastered to his face. "Pity, I was around a lot when you were little. Being an exterior member of the Circle, before they all went completely crazy, I was working with your mother before her change of heart. I was still a trusted confidante once she was out of the witness protection program with those stiffs at the FBI. I phased out through the years though, only purchasing the art to support her attempts at a normal life. Which ironically is funny, since your dear mother is rolling in dough," he said it like it was a hilarious joke, my mother loaded with cash trying to lead a normal life.

"What?" I watched Magnus as he walked around the room. He picked up another glass of champagne from somewhere, and waved it around as he spoke. "My mother isn't rich."

"That's rich," Magnus laughed, turning his amused gaze upon me. "Your mother, not being rich, that's the best thing I've heard all month."

"My mom isn't rich, we're not rich," I shook my head trying to think. "We rent a two-bedroom house, we—we're lower middle class," I felt my mind whirling.

All my life we had been in lower middle class, sometimes straddling the poverty line. We had had to scrape money together for things, sold stock that had belong to my father. But that had been a lie, the man my mother had also said was my father was fictional, there was no stock.

So the spare money had been from her vast accounts. We had lived like that, for what reason? So that people would not know what she was? What she had done before? So that her name would never be mentioned in the news or social columns? So that she could effectively vanish off the face of the planet?

Well that had obviously worked out.

"We've always just barely managed to get by," I finished lamely, my mind still trying to fathom why we lived o poorly if my mom was rich.

"It was all part of her plan, my dear. And I have to admit, it worked fantastically until a certain someone showed up again," the smile dimmed, the corners of his mouth drooped momentarily.

"You know who's responsible for what happened to my mom?" I asked, watching Magnus carefully.

"Do I know what happened to your mom?" Magnus laughed again. "Of course I know what happened to your mom. Weren't you just listening to me?" He smiled, "It was Valentine. That man is far from dead, and if my assumptions are correct, which they generally are, he's after his priceless golden chalice with the nice assortment of jewels embedded in it."

"Valentine? The man who died in that fire upstate? The guy the FBI identified as Valentine Morgenstern by his dental records, isn't actually dead?" I asked him. I knew he wasn't dead!

"Yes, that man," Magnus spun around from where he had been facing a wall near the window, pointing at me as if I had just answered the final question on Jeopardy. "The man the FBI claimed is dead and therefore not looking for, is the one who took your mother. He wants his pretty little cup back, and his wife."

"His wife?"

"Valentine is still desperately in love with her," Magnus came closer to me, holding his glass up, posed to drink it. "And I'll wager he wants you too," he drained the contents of the glass. "I'd say he sees you as a set, you and Jocelyn."

"And this cup?" I didn't want to think about being part of a set, it was creepy.

Magnus frowned and shrugged. "Supposedly."

"But I don't have the cup," I protested. Everyone wanted this cup I was supposed to have, but I didn't have it, or even know where it was. I didn't even known what kind of cup they were even after!

"Jocelyn left you clues," Magnus answered. "And I've managed to collect them all and get them in one place." He spun his arm around in a wide circle, clearly indicating the entire gallery.

"The gallery?"

"I'm really not the art-enthusiast," Magnus conceded happily, "But I'd do anything for Jocelyn."


	20. Chapter 20

If there was a clue in my mother's work, it was well hidden. There wasn't any kind of theme with the pieces, nothing in any of them jumped at out me. It was possible Magnus was just messing with me; as I got to know him I realized he did that a lot.

He dragged me around the gallery, trading the glass I had in my hand out several times as we looked at the pieces. He told me about them, the meaning behind them, as if that would make something click. Sad to say, it didn't. I hadn't seen any of them before, so they didn't say a lot to me.

We ran into Alec and Jace in one of the back rooms of the gallery, they were talking to a group of guys in dark clothes and way too much eyeliner. Emo goths. Jace and Alec were talking to a group of Emo goths in the back of Magnus Bane's art gallery, an art gallery completely devoted to pissing people off.

Yes, the art gallery to piss people off. I don't like you; you can't come in! You want to your precious cup; no cups here, just fancy wine glasses half-filled with fancy champagne! You need the cup; here's a riddle to help you find it, maybe! Look at my magnificence; but not too closely, you might be with the FBI coming to ruin my fun!

There are other scenarios, of course, but that covered the majority of the issues caused by this art gallery.

The emo goths, were part of one of Magnus' partial gangs, the ones he did a little side-work for. They were widely known as Vampires, but they had never pinged on any authority figure's radar. Lucky them, I guess.

Jace and Alec were also about to start a fight with the emo goths, I could tell at a distance by the tension in the boy's shoulders and the sneer replacing Jace's normally bemused expression. The Vampires were also prepping for the fight, they're fists were balled as they shuffled on their feet, moving to surround Alec and Jace.

"Boys," Magnus, handed me his glass of champagne as he floated over to the group. "This is a party. How many times do I have to remind everyone of that?"

"You didn't say they would be here," one of the Vampires spat, his cold glare hardening against Alec and Jace. "It's against our agreements."

"I have a lot of agreements," Magnus sighed dramatically. "And they all tend to pale in comparison with the fact that I owe everything to these people, or people like these charming young men," Magnus gave a charismatic smile to Jace and winked at Alec.

"You don't answer to anyone, Bane," one of the Vampires challenged.

"I have, and always shall, answer to the Clave and people affiliated with it."

Some of the Vampire's settled at the mention of the Clave, but the leader was still riled. "The Clave is a joke since the Circle was disbanded, it's not our problem."

"The Circle is hardly a thing of the past, don't you hooligans watch the news?" The amusement vanished from Magnus' face as he leveled a stern gaze on the Vampire. "They're burning buildings again, taking people hostage, it's just a step away from a full-forced return to their reign. And please tell me you're not stupid enough not to realize what that means to you and your clan of Night Children."

"We haven't forgotten," the lead Vampire spat.

"Then I suggest you not pick fights with them," Magnus arched his brow toward Jace and Alec. "Or you'll have God knows who breathing down your neck in a matter of hours."

"Come on Raphael, they're not worth the hassle," one of the other Vampires stepped forward, taking hold of Raphael by the arm.

"No, not with the Circle looming over our heads." Raphael jerked his arm away from the other boy. "But then again, that's what caused the Circle to have all this power in the first place."

"Please," Magnus sighed, shaking his head dramatically.

"Camille has told us about the Circle's first rise to power, how they walked all over everyone who helped them in the past."

"My usefulness outweighs the Night Children's, and the Children of the Moon's," Magnus added the second group, almost as an afterthought. "I fear the Circle, but so long as I am useful I won't land a bounty on my head. Can you say you have the same fortune?"

"Perhaps you should be more cautious, that's all I'm saying," Raphael nodded with his head, motioning for the others to leave. They all moved away from Jace and Alec, some of them scowling and roughly brushing against their shoulders. "My apologies, Nephilim Children," Raphael inclined his head slightly before trailing after his friends.

"I hate talking politics at a party," Magnus turned back to me, taking both of the glasses I was holding. He downed both of them in a single gulp, "it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth."

"Why did he refer to us as Nephilim Children?" Jace rounded on Magnus.

"It's the name given to the Clave members, coinsidently it also refers to Circle members. Both former and present. They're still referred to as part of the Big Five, oddly enough. Though they have tended to neglect their duties since Jocelyn's betrayal and the Circle's demise."

"We're not part of that," Alec folded his arms over his chest. "We were never part of the Circle, and defiantly not the Clave."

"You know as well as I do that these things run in the blood of the people. You may not be Circle, or even Clave, but your parents were. They are Nephilim, making you Nephilim. It's in the blood, and blood runs thinker than water." Magnus smiled, saluting us with an empty wine glass and then turned, seeking out another server with refills.

"Well, this was a phenomenal waste of time," Alec huffed, dropping his arms as he glared after the Vampires. "Have you seen what you wanted to see now? Are you adequately distracted? Can we leave?"

"Yes," I had seen the art work, not that it helped me out in anyway. I was still as confused about the whereabouts of this cup as I had been after hearing about it in Luke's place.

"Well, I've been thoroughly distracted for the evening," Jace agreed. "Let's find Izzy, and your nerdy friend and hit the pavement."

"He has a name," I looked over my shoulder toward the main hall of the gallery. I had walked through the whole place, and I had seen no sign of Simon, or Izzy.

"I don't actually care," Jace frowned, openly uninterested in the fact that Simon had a name. "I'm still trying to figure out why you're still letting him hang around."

"Simon's my friend," I answered, leveling a stern glare at Jace. "He's my best friend, and just because my life is unraveling at the seams, I'm not going to just start ignoring him."

"It's funny, because you spent three days with us, and barely even mentioned him," Alec commented snidely. "He's obviously not much of best friend."

I turned my glare at Alec. I was used to Jace making the snide comments, I was used to Jace making fun of things. It was part of Jace's personality. I was not use to Alec doing it. Alec had until that point been quiet and reserved. The protective big brother type who reigned the others in, and kept his opinions to himself for the most part.

"Let's go," I could have said a lot of things to them. I should have said a lot of things to them, but I held my tongue. I was staying with them for the foreseeable future, I saw no reason to piss them off over something trivial. "I need to find my best friend," I turned on my heel and stalked away from them.

I heard them laugh behind me. I refused to give them the satisfaction of my turning around, and rising to the bait. I had more important things to worry about than their bromance and snide commentary.

Izzy was leaning over a bar, trying to talk a drink out of the bartender. She smiled charmingly at the guy, batting her bottomless brown eyes, trying to distract him from the fact that she was only sixteen. Given enough time, I think she could have pulled it off.

"It's just a little cocktail," she wrinkled her nose, and held up her hand to show just how small the act of giving her a cocktail would be. "One itty-bitty cocktail, what's the harm?"

"I'm sorry," there was no way the guy was older than twenty-one. "But there are laws and stuff," he muttered out an apology, tugging at his shirt collar.

"Laws," Izzy waved the idea aside laughing. "There was once a law that we couldn't have alcohol at all."

"You have to be twenty-one," the guy gulped, trying to find his resolve. "Magnus will be mad if he gets busted giving drinks to minors."

"No one will know," Izzy leaned in toward the guy, "and the cops won't bust up a Magnus Bane party."

"Iz," Alec slid in beside his sister, cutting off the bartender's next stuttered refusal. "Where's what's his face? It's time to go."

Izzy wrinkled her nose again, leaning back marginally away from her brother. "Meliron had to bail. Apparently there's some new activist movement that needed his immediate attention," she hardly seemed disappointed that her boyfriend ditched her for some movement. My guess was that it was common place, and that was both obnoxious and saddening.

"I meant Clary's friend, the nerdy dude," Alec rolled his eyes with a shake of his head. "You had him last I remember."

Izzy frowned, something I had noticed she did when she was thinking. It seemed she preferred not to think, and the mention of it upset her. Her brow furrowed, meaning she was thinking really hard.

"I haven't seen him in a while," she said at length, her frown lessening marginally.

"I'll just call him," I pulled my phone out, and dialed Simon's number. I could hear his phone ringing.

From Izzy's clutch.

"He asked me to hold his phone," she smiled sheepishly at me while retrieving the phone from her clutch.

"Who did you see him with?" Jace asked, his tone dripping with boredom.

"Some of those emo goth guys," she answered. "But that was before the buster at the door showed up and started tossing people out."

I felt my jaw slacken. He had been with the Vampire gang-thing. He was with the Vampire gang-thing when they got tossed out. Had he been tossed out with them? Was he still with them?

"Was he kicked out with them?"

"No, I don't think so," Izzy answered slowly. "But, he might have been."

"We have to go find him."

"He's with the Vampire's," Jace scoffed. "They're hardly a threat."

I turned a glare at Jace.

"Fine, fine. We'll find him," Jace sighed, nodding for Alec and Izzy to follow him.


	21. Chapter 21

The Hotel Dumort.

It was a run down, should-have-been condemned, eye sore. The windows and doors were boarded up, there was a ten-foot chain-link fence around the place with a thick padlock holding the only gate shut tight. I couldn't understand why anyone would use it as their base of operations, unless they were ten-year-old's playing spy.

The Vampires, or Night Children, used the place as their hangout. They came in through the basement, which was connected to the underground tunnels dating back to the Prohibition, which also happened to open up in an old warehouse a few streets over. We did not enter the Hotel Dumort via the tunnels from the Prohibition.

No, that would have been too easy.

As Simon would have said, they would have expected that.

We entered the Hotel Dumort by cutting through the chain-link fence in the back alley, hidden behind a dumpster. It reeked, to say the least. To say the most, I was not dressed for crawling through trash laden alleyways, crawling under and through a fence and then sneaking into a derelict hotel for wanna-be vampires. I doubt I would have been prepared for that no matter what I was wearing.

But all of Jace and Alec's detective skills had led us to the Hotel Dummort, with conformation that the Vampires had dragged Simon in with them. And as much as they didn't care, they could hardly return without me. Hodge was already pissed I had wandered away from the set, I could only imagine how mad he would be after learning about the evening's excursion (which would include leaving me on my own again and ditching the body guards, not once, but twice) and clearly Alec was thinking the same thing.

"Okay, can we just find him and get out of here?" Alec's hands had been clenched at his side since we left Magnus' gallery. "Hodge is already pissed." Apparently, Alec had been in contact with their agent throughout the night.

"Hodge is always pissed about something," Izzy replied off-handedly, looking around the dusty and mildew-stricken building. "How exactly has this thing been spared from demolition?"

"Somebody owns the property," Jace answered. "And if they own it, and it's boarded up, I guess the City can't touch it." He shrugged, toeing part of the banister of the grand staircase in the front lobby, it moaned as it shifted under his touch.

"It's still a safety issue," Izzy frowned at the creaking staircase, which was just creaking for the sake of creaking. Defiantly a bad sign, creaking before we started up the stairs. It should have been a sign that we needed to go back, we should have stopped while we were ahead.

But there were a few problems with that…

1) We didn't have Simon.

2)We were almost sure Simon was there.

3)All of us, except Alec, had a lovely sense of adventure.

4) Honestly, it could have just been the wind causing the wood to creak.

"It's probably just the wind," I forged ahead, determined not to be scared. My best friend needed me, and he would do the same for me. "Come on, let's find Simon."

"I can't believe were doing this," Alec sighed, taking the rear of the line as the others trailed after me.

"Come on Alec, just pretend you're Jem Carstairs. This is right up his alley," Jace joked from right behind me. "A daring rescue of some helpless Mundane."

"This isn't a movie set, Jace," Alec snapped. "This is stupid, and dangerous."

"You don't have to come," Izzy offered. I could hear her exasperation at her brother. For all his complaining, about basically everything, Alec was generally the last one to stop doing something. It was like he was just trying to point out everything wrong, so that he could gloat over the fact that he told them it would happen.

"And face Hodge without the three of you with me? No thanks," Alec answered, earning a chuckle from Jace.

"Told you, Izzy."

"Shut up," I heard her smack Jace on the shoulder. "He always say that."

"I don't always say that!"

"Told you," Jace remarked smugly.

"I give up," Alec sighed.

* * *

We climbed the stairs as close to the edge as we could. The wooden stairs were already creaking, so we weren't concerned with the noise. We were more concerned with the stairs falling out from under us, a good concern in my opinion. I used the rail to keep myself against the wall, the going was slow.

For some reason, the whole of the hotel was empty except for the very top floor. The building was so old there was not an elevator. We slowly climbed all the way up the building to where the Vampires hung out, checking each creaking, sagging floor as we went.

"Can we be finished now?" Alec pulled his cell phone out of his pocket as we reached the final landing of the stairwell. "It's almost dawn, we've literally been out all night; again." He pointed a glare at me, as if it was my fault.

It was probably, possibly, mostly my fault. But it wasn't all my fault, Jace had something to do with it; very little, but it was still partially his fault. It was also partially Izzy's for letting Simon hang out with Vampires at that stupid party. And Magnus Bane's because his bouncer kicked the Vampires out of that stupid party early.

See, not completely my fault. Just possibly, probably, mostly my fault.

And if they had been out all night, that was hardly my fault anyway. I like sleep, I could sleep for days and keep going. Before I met Jace and the Lightwoods, I wasn't big on all-nighters. I was barely good with staying up past two in the morning. But with Jace I was up until three or four on the regular, and up again by seven to be on set on time.

"Alec, we are aware that it is almost dawn, please stop reminding us of our bad decisions while we're making them," Jace commented sourly, pressing his back against the wall beside the door frame. "And focus, this is a low-life gang, but it's still a gang."

"We are three highly-trained, black-belt martial artists in multiple disciplines," Izzy arched her brow at Jace, "I doubt a bunch of emo-goths pretending to be Count Dracula are going to be much of a threat."

I heard someone else coming up the stairs. Several people coming up the stairs, talking loudly. I hit Alec in the shoulder to get his attention, and pointed down the stairwell.

"Listen," I hissed before Alec could complain that I had hit him, pointing down below us again.

"I can't believe Raphael and Camille are still going at it," one of them commented. "You would think we didn't have more serious problems to deal with."

"Besides what? Those Werewolves creeping in on our turf?" the other laughed miserably.

"More like the Circle," the first answered. "I'm not stupid, no matter what Raphael says, I can tell something's going on."

"Raphael can handle it."

"Camille handled it before," I heard the edge in the guy's voice. He was angry about Raphael, who wasn't even in charge of things. "Camille had deals with people, she worked with the Warlocks and everyone else to make sure the Circle didn't kill too many of us."

"Raphael is the one who slipped us under the FBI's notice," the second commented. They were getting closer, and barely sounded winded. Maybe that was why they frequented the top floor, to exhaust anyone trying to reach them. "If it wasn't for him, the fuzz would be all over us."

"You put too much faith in him. He's too young."

"And Camille has been here too long," the first one appeared momentarily over the rail of the stairs, spitting toward the floor way below us. "Do you hear something?"

"Your fat ass waddling up the stairs," the second snapped angrily. "Quit trying to change the subject."

"I'm serious," the guy's head appeared over the rail again.

"Get back," I jumped back, pulling Alec and Jace back with me. Alec grabbed his sister as a moved. We had all leaned over to hear the conversation.

"There's someone else on the stairs."

"You're being paranoid," the second scoffed. "This place is a disaster waiting to happen, no one but us would even consider coming within a hundred feet of here."

"I'm serious," the sound of a gun being loaded echoed up the to us.

"Shit," Jace mouthed.

"They have a gun," Alec glared at me again.

"I was too," the second Vampire responded.

"It's not her fault, Alec," Izzy hissed, in my opinion it was entirely too loud. The whole stairwell echoed impossibly easily. And those Vampires were still climbing steadily toward us.

"I can hear something," the first said again. They were close, probably just a single floor below us, or just about to reach it.

"We need to move," I backed through the door, pulling at Izzy's wrist as I did so. "Come on."

Izzy nodded, tapping Jace on the shoulder and indicating that we were moving. Jace and Alec shared a brief glance and nodded. Jace moved first, taking the lead from me while Alec stayed in the stairwell. Once we had gone a little way away from the door, Jace stopped and motioned to Alec.

He ran after us.

We ducked into a small room just as the two Vampires came out of the stairwell. They stood in the hall for a few minutes looking around.

"See, I told you were paranoid," one of them shoved the other aside roughly. "There's nothing here."

"Maybe it was that new guy," the other conceded, tucking his handgun in the waist of his jeans. "Come on, they're waiting for us," he started down the hall.

"They do have Simon," I breathed.

"They just have a new guy," Alec protested.

"It's Simon," Izzy was leaning around the door frame, looking after the boys.

"How do you know?" Jace leaned around behind her. "Oh."

"Oh what?" I asked.

"It is Simon," I leaned around behind Jace and Izzy, looking down the hall.

It was Simon, being dragged down the hall by four of the Vampires.


	22. Chapter 22

By the time we found where they had taken Simon it was all over. There was nothing we could do. There was nothing anyone could have done.

He had been branded. It looked like an actual brand, not a pitiful attempt at a tattoo. The mark was on the side of his neck, like the bite marks of Count Dracula with blood running down the side of his neck from them. He was holding a gun in his hand, and looking at it like it was venomous viper.

Raphael was standing in front of him, smiling happily as he looked down at Simon.

"Welcome brother."

I don't fully remember how we got Simon out of there. I know Jace and Alec beat the shit out of a few of the Vampires. Izzy did a fair amount as well, Jace wasn't kidding when he said they were all black belts. Simon left the gun behind when we started running.

We ran all the way back to the Lightwood home. Hodge was locked away in the library/office, if he knew we returned, he didn't say anything. In the kitchen Izzy pulled out a large first-aid kit and doctored Simon's neck.

Simon stayed at the Lightwood house the rest of that night, and with us the next day and that night. I texted his mom using his phone so she wouldn't worry about him, saying he was staying at Eric's. Simon was really quiet on the set that day, sitting beside me with a hoodie on, the hood up and shadowing his face.

I tried to get him to talk about it, but he refused. He shrugged, turning away from me, and adjusting his hood to make sure the bandages were still covered. It was a long awkward day, made more so by the fact that Simon was living his dream of being on the set of a Lightwood movie, and he was too miserable to enjoy it.

He crashed out as soon as we got back to the house.

* * *

There are four major gangs.

Magnus talked about some of them at the art gallery. They are the big gangs, not quite Mafia but more than the street thugs who usually lurk in the dark alleys. There used to be five, but the Circle made the jump to Mafia.

Since I've already talked the Circle to death, I'm not going to do it again. Honestly it's all boring, but I feel it needs to be said, so that everything that happened after Simon was drafted into the Vampires makes sense. And a lot did happen after that night.

The Vampires reside in a run-down hotel. They fancy themselves a cult of legit vampires, avoiding sunlight and mainly running around at night. For the most part they stay under the radar. Whether that's because they don't do anything, or if they have a contact with the police I don't know.

Their leader was this chick named Camille Belcourt. She was cold and heartless, just like the vampires from the old stories. Rumor has it she dated Magnus when they were teenagers, it ended badly. Rumor also has it that it ended because of a rift forming between the Vampires and the Warlocks. I don't know if that's true or not, but there is a rift between the Vamipres and all the other gangs.

Currently their stand-in leader is this kid named Raphael Santiago, he joined in at the ripe of age of thirteen and served directly under Camille until around two years before I met Jace and the Lightwoods. He used the time to earn the trust of the more influential members of the Vampires, when Camille suddenly vanished, no one questioned his claim to leadership.

Rumors about him are mainly saying he killed Camille so he could lead the Vampires. There's also one saying that he has Camille tucked away somewhere, waiting for the perfect time to release her and prove that he's the best suited to run the gang. Magnus said he joined the Vampires just for the power.

Magnus also said that he tried to stop Raphael from joining up. Tried to get that kid to go back home and forget about it. He tried to stop Raphael from killing his friends.

That's how you join the Vampires, you kill someone. Some go so far as to drink the blood of their victims. Simon never told me who he killed, how he killed them, how they forced him to do it. I never heard a gunshot, but he had to have done something.

Magnus is the High Warlock of Brooklyn. That's a really fancy title for saying he's in charge of the Warlock gang. There are High Warlocks all over the world, so the Warlock gang is not just a local clique, and Magnus in all his charm and glory somehow managed to become their local leader. Not that he ever let that get to him, he's still the same extravagant trust-fund baby he had been before the power.

Warlocks, unlike the other gangs, are completely neutral. They work for money only, they are expensive, and they will do literally anything once they have their money. They need it, if all of them flaunt their money like Magnus, which I'm not 100% positive that they don't.

Warlocks are the people everyone goes to. They are completely comprised of the "I know a guy," guys. Magnus is the top of the list of guys to know, the most outrageously priced, and the very best at it.

Warlocks blend in beautifully with normal society, I've walked past them my whole life and never known it. One of them works at a hospital, saving tiny babies and comforting dying old people. There's one who teaches at NYU, a history professor with Tenure. Magnus, who lives off his trust fund and pissing authority figures off, looks like a guy who spends too much time in coffee shops, or chasing skirts around a college campus.

They blend beautifully, but they are very powerful. Magnus bought my mother's art work and made a gallery just so that he could annoy Valentine, the Circle, and the Clave. And no one can touch him, there are no connections to anything. Magnus has done a lot more too, without so much as a proverbial slap on the wrist from the police, FBI, CIA, or any other government funded agency.

Next are the Werewolves, more commonly referred to as the Wolves. Their favorite hangout is a Chinese Take-out place called the Jade Wolf. People in the Wolves come from all kinds of places. There are teenagers, old men, whole families. It's weird, but they're like an actually pack of wolves.

They're leader is a burly, mountain of a man named Gabriel. Werewolves ditch their last names after joining the pack, again it's weird, but it's not my business. Gabriel was a no-nonsense type of guy, according to everyone I've talked too, but he was fair and kind. I never got to meet him, he was replaced before I had the chance. Like with an actual wolf pack, the alpha is killed when a new alpha emerges.

The Wolves work with the Clave more readily than any of the others, but they are still their own group and like to annoy the Calve by acting out. They're a fun group, at least the ones I had the pleasure of meeting were. Some of them are grumpy old men who yell too much, and some of them are constantly drunk and picking fights, which I guess is fun too.

Besides the Jade Wolf, they also frequent a pub called the Hunter's moon. The bar tender is a guy called Stinky Pete, and he services drinks to any of the Wolves, regardless of age, and offers discounts for the other three gangs. Pack has to make money somehow I guess.

The Fey are the fourth of the gangs. They are all crazy. Every single one of them. Izzy's boyfriend in a Fey, one of the higher ups. They are activists, like the ones who think bombing something will prove their point, and using aggressive-protests will make their message clearer.

They're leader is some chick who needs a physic-evaluation, refers to herself as the Queen, and likes to toy with people. But then again all of the Fey like toying with people. They think they're superior to everyone else.

They might be, for I know. After all, I've been lumped in with the Clave and the Nephilim. And I hardly knew what they were until Magnus explained it to us.

Nephilim are the original gang that the Circle morphed out of. They used to be a force to be reckoned with. But since the mess with the Circle and Valentine, they're the butt of most everyone's joke.

The Clave is the authority of the gangs. They are like the illegal police force, controlling the inner gang violence and keeping everything under wraps. The Clave makes the laws, and the gangs abide by them, for the most part. I mean, they are gangs after all.

Only Nephilim are part of the Clave, they have this Council where they have hearings and dish out punishments for breaking their laws. Messing with the Clave is the same as toying with the FBI or CIA, it doesn't end well if you're not completely prepared for it, and no one ever is.

Sed lex dura lex. The Law is hard but it is the Law. That's the motto of the Clave, the motto Jace, Alec and Izzy readily adopted as they joined the ranks of the Nephilim and the Clave.

I wasn't so sure. I had been happy being completely normal, without the stress of being famous by association with Jace and the Lightwoods, without the headaches from trying to find my mom when Valentine took her. Without worrying about Simon and the Vampires, what the Clave was doing and how it affected me.

I joined in, it was the only way I could find my mom, and that stupid cup Valentine was looking for. I couldn't leave Simon to face the mess alone, Jace wouldn't let me not join in.

I was already in. Nephilim are born, very rarely do they induct new family members, and if you marry outside of them, you are exiled. Being Nephilim is dangerous, being involved in anything like the gangs and Mafia Families are dangerous.

But I had to get my mom back.


	23. Chapter 23

The movie finished filming the last week of June. Hodge took off in a private jet back for L.A. saying he missed the sunshine and had grown tired of Jace. I completely agreed with that. Jace was starting to rub me the wrong way, but I still wanted to spend all the time I could with him. And we had an abundance of free time once the movie wrapped up.

Eric's band videos fell out of the limelight that summer. It was clear their minute of fame was over, but mine was only just beginning. I was tailed by paparazzi, ambushed at Java Jones for an interview, swamped by new adoring fans, and nearly mugged by extreme Jace fangirls, which I learned are actually a thing. It was a good thing that after our little trip to the Hotel Dumort I was assigned my own personal body guard, to both keep me where I was supposed to be, and to stop crazed fans and paparazzi away from me.

Simon hung around a lot more. He claimed it was to see me, as a part of the Vampire Clan, it was hard for the police to do anything to stop him. I suspected that Simon hanging around at the Lightwood house had more to do with Izzy than me. He had taken to her, and surprisingly Izzy had taken to Simon.

"She dumped Meliron once she learned he was one of those psychos in Fey," Jace told me without any form of doubt. "I don't know why she chose your friend though."

"He has a name," Jace refused to acknowledge that Simon was staying (as both my friend and apparently Izzy's current boyfriend), or that he had a name. "He's been hanging out with Izzy for almost a whole month."

"Izzy dates a lot of people, it won't last," he sounded sure, really sure. I could believe that, that someone like Izzy could date a lot of people. All the girls at school who looked like Izzy dated lots of guys, and they weren't famous.

"Well he's my friend, that should be enough of a reason to remember his name."

It didn't work. Jace refused to call Simon by his name, Alec complained about the fact Simon was around, and I was stuck listening to it since Simon spent so much time with Izzy. It was almost not worth it to have Simon around if he wasn't actually around when I needed him.

Like the week that the proof of life didn't arrive in the mail. He wasn't going with me to the house like he had the first few weeks, and when I talked to him about it he spent a good part of the conversation texting Izzy. And the week the proof of life didn't show up, I knew it was because my time had officially run out.

I returned to my home, the ruins of it anyway, for one last desperate sweep of the place. If my mom had that cup thing that the Circle wanted, it would have to be at the house. There was nowhere else my mom would trust.

The roof had collapsed in a bit more. Our landlord is a total flake who couldn't be bothered with demolition, or he still wasn't allowed too because of the open police investigation. Either way, it worked in my favor to dig around a bit without the police there ready to take everything off my hands the minute I picked it up.

Nothing that had ever been mine had survived. Luke had intentionally destroyed all evidence that I was around so that the Circle wouldn't know about me, clearly that had failed. But most of my mom's things were still where she had put them, her clothes still hanging in the closet, though filled with bugs and other wildlife, the furniture where she set it apart from what the police and fire departments had moved in those first few days. If the police hadn't found it, how was I supposed to?

"This place becomes more and more depressing, every time I come here," I had traded my body guard for Jace, his three blackbelts made him an acceptable substitute according to the police. He would have come regardless, so it was easier just to ask him.

"How do you think I feel?" I asked sarcastically, ducking under the boards failing to block the kitchen window.

"I would say pretty great, after all, you get to spend your time with me," he smiled smugly, sliding inside after me.

The kitchen had not been touched by the fire, but it had suffered water damage from putting the fire out. The ceiling was warped and drooping, the wallpaper was peeling away in long strips, otherwise it looked like it had the last time I had sat down to eat in it.

"Lucky me," I sighed looking around the room. All of this over a stupid cup? My life in tatters over a stupid cup? "Now help me look."

Jace frowned around the kitchen. "What exactly are we looking for again?" he asked, toeing a chair away from the table. I could tell he was considering sitting in it, the only thing stopping him was the fact that it looked weathered and slightly unstable. "I know it's a cup, but could you be a touch more specific?"

"It's golden," I answered distractedly.

"Like color, or material?"

"I'm not sure," I answered moving from the kitchen toward the living room. "I heard Luke say it was a golden chalice."

"A golden chalice?" Jace scoffed, toeing everything in his path aside with great caution. Until then I would never have thought Jace was so careful, but then again we were in a slightly collapsed building. "That sounds a bit," he chewed on his lip, trying to find a word.

"Middle Ages?" I asked, going through the cabinets. I knew it wouldn't be there, I had been opening those cabinets my whole life, using those well-worn dishes since I could remember. I would have remembered a golden anything in those cabinets—in the entire house. But I looked anyway, my mom had to have left it somewhere.

"Godly," Jace responded. "A golden chalice sounds godly, like Olympian, or maybe Egyptian."

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head as I decided not to comment on it. It was oddly a fitting description, but it was weird for it to be coming from Jace's mouth. He acted so ridiculous so much of the time, it was impossible for me to take him seriously.

"But then again, the City of Gold was in the America's somewhere," he trailed after me into the living room. "But that gold was metaphorical gold, like knowledge; I think," he continued watching as I looked around the living room. "I mean when Robert and Maryse took us to the ruins in Mexico, I didn't see any gold. I did see the snake/dragon thing, Quetzalcoatl, at the pyramid in Chichen Itza though."

"That's two different things, Jace," I wasn't big on the history of Mezoamerica, but I did know a bit about Mayan Gods. Quetzalcoatl was not Mayan; he was an Aztec god. The temple at Chichen Itza was for Kukulkan. They were similar, but not the same; mainly like Greek and Roman Olympian Gods. "Mayan and Aztec."

"Which had the El Dorado?"

"All of South America," I answered, trying to dig through the closet to see if my mom hid anything in there. "You're tall."

"And you're short," he countered guardedly, as if his height was an insult. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"Can you reach the back of this shelf?" On tip-toe I could barely reach the shelf at all, normally I brought a chair from the kitchen to stand on. Since they looked easily collapsible, I decided not to risk it.

"I'm not going in there. The ceiling could fall!"

There was nothing wrong with the ceiling in the closet. There was no water damage or anything. I glared at Jace, hoping my agitation would radiate off me and make him help me, which he was claiming to do.

"What happened to your sense of adventure?"

"It crawled in a hole and died," he answered seriously.

"So this is how Jace Wayland helps people? By not helping them?"

"Jace Wayland is helping, but come on," he gave an exasperated sigh brushing his hair back from his face. "The house was on fire, the whole ceiling is sagging, and there's grass growing in the carpet!" he waved at a spot near the front door, where there was a thick patch of weeds growing up through the warn carpet.

I narrowed my gaze at that spot. There wasn't a basement on our house, but I was still pretty sure that it wasn't just sitting on the ground. Who in their right mind would just build a house sitting flesh on the ground?

"Help me out," I started for the window. What was under there? And why was something growing from it.

"With what?" Jace asked, once again displaying more caution than I thought possible for him.

"Pulling up the carpet," I grabbed a piece of the front door-jam and wedged it between the wall and wall base, meaning to pry it apart.

It took a few minutes for us to get the wall base pulled away and the edge of the carpet pulled up. Jace was only helpful because I told him we could go to Taki's as soon as we found the cup or completely turned the house up-side down and found nothing. Turns out that Jace and Alec loved Taki's so much because no one really knew about it, therefore it was safe...

But it didn't too long, because once we finally got the carpet up we found a hole in the crawlspace going all the way to the ground. Because of the excessive water from the fire, and the fact that everything was now getting sunlight, the weeds were growing in the three square foot hole. Mom must have made the hole, because she had stashed another of the small chests like the one containing the baby things of the brother I never knew I had. Only this one had three things in it; a mirror, a butterfly knife, and a golden chalice. I recognized all three items from some of my mom's pieces in Magnus Bane's art gallery, she had left clues after all.

"Do you think this is the chalice the Circle is after?" Jace asked idly opening and closing the butterfly knife with expert grace.

"It has to be," I breathed, running my thumb over the rim of the cup and the embedded jewels. "Why else would my mom have buried it?"

"So, mission accomplished," Jace snapped the butterfly knife shut and smiled happily. "On to Taki's! I'm starved," he announced as if I didn't know that already, "and Alec is going to meet us," because that's new and different, Alec joining us at Taki's…

"Whatever," I took the butterfly knife from Jace and put it and the chalice back in the chest and tucked it under my arm.

I could finally get my mom back. I had the stupid cup. It was finally almost over.

Now I only had to figure out how to contact the Circle and give them the stupid thing.


	24. Chapter 24

"Why didn't you tell me you were going to look around the house?" Simon arrived at Taki's with Izzy while Jace was describing how he found the cup to Alec. He made it sound like he did a lot, like he had the bright idea to dig around until he found the cup buried in the ground. Alec sounded impressed by Jace's venture.

"I tried," I answered shortly. "But you never texted me back."

Simon looked guiltily at his phone, opening the eight unread messages from me and trying to hide that fact. "Sorry, I was a little busy," he muttered, stuffing his phone back in his pocket.

"It's fine," I folded my arms leaning back in the booth beside Jace. "It was final desperate act," I looked down at the chest between me and Jace. The final desperate act had paid off for once, generally they only resulted in more problems, set-backs, or worse. I had the cup, I was that much closer to getting my mom back.

"So how are we contacting the Circle?" Izzy looked up from her phone. She had slid in the booth and immediately pulled her phone out to check something. "Did they give you a way to contact them?" she snapped the phone shut and tucked it back in her pocket.

"Like, forever ago, Iz," Alec answered. "But we're not doing anything until we've talked to the Clave."

Jace gave Alec a tempered look, his hand falling protectively over the chest. "The Clave? Really Alec?"

"Yes, the Clave," Alec answered, returning Jace's look perfectly. "We work for the Clave, remember?"

"I remember," Jace's hand briefly hoovered over this bicep, where a mark of the Nephilim had been tattooed. We were all permanently marked as part of the Nephilim, and by extension the Clave.

"If we turn this stuff over to the Clave, I'll never get my mom back," I protested, picking up where Jace had left off.

The Circle didn't answer to the Clave anymore, if they ever did. Giving the cup and the stuff with it in the chest to the Clave would just take me a step backwards. I had to keep the cup to myself, I had to get it to the Circle.

"If the Circle is after," Alec stopped short, looking over his shoulder toward the door. Taki's was mostly empty, as was the usual for their daytime hours. But the door had swung open, the bell catching Alec's attention.

None other than Magnus Bane had sauntered through the door. His dark hair was spiked and held in place with glitter hairspray, his yellow shirt accenting his green-ish eyes. Alec slid down in his seat.

"Ah, my favorite little Nepilim!" Magnus did a brief sweep of the empty dining area, his eyes alighting on our table. He smiled broadly as he crossed the room, making a bee-line to us. "I hear you have good news."

Jace's hand fell over the chest we'd recovered from my house, trying to guard it from Magnus' view. "What kind of news?"

"News sure does travel fast," Simon commented sourly as he was shoved to the wall to make room for Magnus to join us at the table.

"Of course it does!" Magnus happily took up most of the bench beside Simon and Izzy. "And this is great news! The best in fact," he motioned for Kaelie to join us.

"Is that so?" Jace pulled me closer to him, as if we weren't already crowded into the booth. It seemed the Warlocks didn't need to know what we'd found either. "What fantastic news have you heard?" Jace questioned, his arm falling across my lap.

"One," Magnus held his finger up, narrowing his eyes at me and Jace, "you two do make a lovely couple. I was hoping that the tabloids weren't lying about the relationship."

I flushed, trying to slide away, but Jace held me tighter. I hadn't read the tabloids recently, perhaps that had been a mistake. It seemed my association with the Lightwoods was coming across as more than just platonic friendship.

"Two: I don't believe it for a minute." Magnus snorted, rolling his eyes. "What fifteen-year-old in her right mind does that, with someone like him?" he gestured vaguely toward Jace, who pulled me in a little closer to completely hide the chest between the two of us. "Kaelie, please. I'm parched!" he called loudly since Kaelie still had not come to his beckoning.

"What trash are you reading now?" Alec asked, with an air of familiarity I didn't believe he should have had with Magnus. "Those two haven't done anything!" I feel Alec would have waved in our direction but his arms were pinned to sides by the wall and Jace.

"You guys know these booths are only made for four?" Kaelie stopped by the table delivering at cup of coffee off in front of Magnus as she pulled out her order pad. "And we do have larger tables."

"They're not booths," Izzy answered as if that fully explained the inferior quality of the other tables. It did, to everyone except Kaelie.

"Or our spot," Jace added, still holding me tightly to his side. "Come on Kaelie, keep up."

"I've kept up enough to know that there are five of you now," Kaelie arched her brow at Jace, while scribbling down the regular orders. "I also know that you two are trying really hard not to be a thing."

"We're not a thing," I sputtered, my face burning as more blood rushed to my cheeks. "We're just friends."

"Okay," Kaelie sighed, rolling her eyes. I realized at that point that I was practically in Jace's lap, hiding the chest from everyone gathering at our table. "Magnus, which usual do you want today?"

"The new one, I think," Magnus smiled at Kaelie. "Also if you could, I would love some fresh berries."

"They're not in season yet," Kaelie smiled, making a note on her pad. "I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, love," Magnus started pouring sugar in his coffee cup as Kaelie walked away. "Anyway, back to those two."

"There's nothing going on," Alec, Simon, and I nearly shouted in unison. I flushed deeper, Simon dropped his gaze to the table top, Alec glared at Magnus.

"Touchy," Magnus smiled knowingly at Alec, topping his coffee off with a bit more sugar. "Anyway, the good news from my favorite Nephilim."

"What makes you think we have good news?" Izzy asked, watching Magnus as he stirred the sugar slurry around in his coffee mug. "How would you know about it if we did?"

"The Warlocks know everything," Magnus answered. "It's our job to know these things, and I wouldn't be High Warlock if I had missed out on this," he looked knowingly at me and Jace again.

"Well then can you enlighten us?" Izzy asked coyly, folding her arms on the table and turning to face Magnus. "It seems we did miss something."

"More's the pity," Magnus dropped his spoon in his coffee cup as he turned to face Izzy. "Because it's truly wonderful, spectacular news, and I would know; I am an expert in wonderfully spectacular news."

"Spare us," Jace rolled his eyes. "What have you heard, Magnus?"

"That a pretty little red-head found her daddy's missing cup," Magnus answered. "And her daddy is very excited to have it back."

I felt my stomach drop.

It was strange how much Magnus knew, how quickly he learned about things. It had barely been half an hour since Jace and I had found the chest hidden in the living room floor of my home, and Magnus already knew about it; the Circle already knew about it too.

It seemed we wouldn't have to worry about contacting them, they were clearly already on their way to us. And if they already knew we had the cup, it was possible the Clave knew too. And the Clave was as interested in the cup as whoever was leading the Circle (According to Magnus that was Valentine, but I had a hard time believing that a dead man wasn't actually dead).

"We haven't found anything," Jace answered while I was still trying to find my stomach and some nerve. "We did another sweep of the house and came out empty handed."

"So you're not hiding anything by pulling that poor girl into your lap?" Magnus asked, eyeing the lack of space between Jace and myself.

"No, we're not," Jace answered instantly. He was good at lying, I had never realized. "What would be hiding? And why?"

Magnus shrugged, holding his hands out up apologetically. "It's what I've heard. Word travels fast you know."

"We didn't find anything," Jace stated again. Not anymore forcefully than he had before, making it seem truthful.

"Then why are you hold her in your lap?" Magnus allowed a small smile to turn the corners of his mouth up.

"Because," I started, but that was all I managed.

Jace wrapped his arm around me, took a hold of the back of my head and pulled me into a kiss.

I resisted for maybe three seconds. Then I melted into him, breathing in the sweet scent of his soap and deodorant. I could feel him smile as his lips pressed against mine.

I would say it was horrible, but I'd be lying. I could say I didn't want to kiss him, but that would be a lie too. I had spent time with Jace, and as annoying as he was, he was also endearing.

And let's be honest; the boy is hot as hell.

"Well," I heard Magnus smirk, barely audible over the sound of Alec choking on something and Simon assaulting the table.

I didn't care, not really. I was kissing Jace, and he was kissing me. For a minute I forgot about the Clave and the Circle, because I was consumed by Jace and the pressure of his mouth against mine.


	25. Chapter 25

_After years of heartbreak after heartbreak, it seems Jonathan Lightwood is ready to give love another chance. In the midst of the Circle's return, and the Lightwood family being under close investigation, it seems life does in fact go on. Recent reports have seen the adopted Lightwood in the company with a certain someone, a lot._

 _A certain little red-head has stolen the heart of Jonathan Lightwood. It all started at the beginning of the summer when Hodge Starkweather, long-time friend of the Lightwood Family, signed Youtube star Clary Fray to his talent roster. While working with Starkweather during the summer, it was bound to happen that she would meet the Lightwood trio._

 _It seemed for a while though that young Clary was uninterested in Jonathan, if the pictures provided by disclosed sources can be believed. They had several small spats during the early months of the summer, and Clary spent a fair amount of time with fellow Youtube star Simon Lewis._

 _Last night though, it seemed that Jonathan Lightwood and Clary Fray finally decided to give romance a try. At a favorite hangout of the Lightwood children, Jonathan and Clary made their relationship known to the public eye._

 _It seems we can now officially put the rumors about Jonathan and Alexander to rest. Along with the rumors that Jonathan was in love with his adopted sister Isabelle. The only rumor still to put to rest is who seems to have stolen young Isabelle's heart now that she and Meliron have split up?_

* * *

 _Mafia Families on the rise again, mysterious murders and large scale arsons. It's like a throw-back to the late 80's around here. With a little something sweet to add to the mix._

 _Back in the 80's and early 90's we had the tragic love story of Valentine Morgenstern and Jocelyn Fairchild in the mix of rising gang violence and the terror of the new Mafia Family, whose reign was, thankfully, very short lived. The war like era plaguing New York back then added to the tragedy of the Morgenstern Family, taking their first-born son and sending Jocelyn over her breaking point._

 _The fallout was one of the worst in history. It was akin to a Shakespeare play with the betrayals and unexpected outcomes. Jocelyn and a handful of the Circle's faithful turned on the Mafia Boss and put all of their former family behind bars._

 _Now the Circle has reared its ugly head once again, pulling in a new generation to put under suspicion. Of those are the Lightwood's children Alexander and Isabelle, their adopted son, the only child of the late Michael Wayland, and the daughter of Jocelyn Morgenstern. Surprise, surprise._

 _It seems that there was more than one child born to the star-crossed and ill-fated lovers Jocelyn and Valentine. Though Valentine never lived to meet his daughter, she seems to have more of him in her blood than her mother hoped for. She has found her way back into the fold of old Circle Members. Staying with the Lightwoods in their luxurious New York Home._

 _What does that mean for us? If the young Morgenstern is gathering members to join the Circle, we may be in for a bumpy ride. Or maybe it's just a coincidence that Clarissa has fallen in with Lightwood children. Though we hardly believe in coincidences._

* * *

Gossip columns, front page stories, news headlines, twice my relationship with Jace and the Lightwoods was the lead story for the evening news, and it ran as a top story on E! News for a whole week. I couldn't do anything without seeing my face plastered on the newsstands or flashing on the television. And they weren't just regular pictures of me, they were pictures of me with Jace, kissing him, holding his hand, sitting with him at Taki's, and one of us in the pool at the Lightwood house. It was a nightmare, literally.

But, besides the fact that I could no longer go out in public from all the renewed intensity of the paparazzi trying to find a picture of me and Jace, being in a relationship with Jace was absolutely amazing. It's not that we acted differently, at least I don't think we acted differently than we had the rest of the summer. It was just that I was with Jace, so when we were walking on the streets he would hold my hand, and when we ate, he sat next to me and not Alec. There were other things too, little things that kinda gave me butterflies in my stomach; catching him staring at me, the rush of heat I got when he kissed me, the tingling sensation running up my arm when our fingers brushed against one another.

And there are worst places to be shut up in. The Lightwood house is huge, and I had my own room that was finally starting to feel like my space, filled with sketches and clothes I had bought for me, finally freeing myself of Izzy's wardrobe. And Simon was around a lot, he was with Izzy, I was with Jace, and Magnus managed to worm his way in as Alec's new not traitorous best friend.

Simon and I had a bet going. I won't say who won, but it had to do with why Magnus and Alec spent so much time together. It also had to do with why the assumed feelings were kept in the dark.

Shortly after finding mom's hidden treasure chest in the house, the friendly kidnappers Emil Pangborn and Samuel Blackwell, showed up at Taki's. They were sent by their boss, whom they refused to name, to get the cup from me. I refused.

Or more, Alec refused for me. He was insistent to take the cup to the Clave and let the Clave deal with the return of the Circle. That could have worked, except all the Clave members I had talked to, literally could not find a way to care less about my mom, who had helped them bring the Circle to justice in the early 90's. Fun fact about the Clave, they only care about the here and now, and will only remember the past if They are owed something.

Technically we answered to the Clave, so I think was supposed to just hand the cup and the mirror and the knife over without a fuss. I've never been much for following the rules, and even less when something seems completely ridiculous. Not helping my mom, who had done a lot for them in the past, seemed pretty high up on the list of ridiculous things the Clave was doing.

Really long story short, I ticked off Alec. I didn't give the Clave Valentine's golden chalice. Jace agreed with me. There was a lot of yelling. Some slamming doors, and suddenly the not so horrible place to be locked up in, was a nightmare.

Only I could mess up something that good.

* * *

So ive decided that we need to engage the next phase of the rebellion

Lets do it!

Im serious.

Me too. weve been idle too long

Its only been a few weeks

What is the next phase

Contacting the circle

Alec turned them out

Then well just have to get them back in

Sounds dangerous

I wouldnt have it any other way

Do you think alec will let me in

Ill let you in the back door

Cool. be there in 20

* * *

"Have you thought of how we're supposed to start phase two yet?" Simon asked as I unbolted the back door of the Lightwood house. "Because I was thinking on the way over here that we could like start a rumble."

"A rumble?" I laughed at the suggestion. What would a rumble accomplish?

"Yeah, like in _The Outsiders_. They had a rumble, everyone came out to that."

"The whole basis of that story was fighting, of course everyone came to the big fight at the end. Not coming would have made the story pointless."

"The whole basis of that story is to not judge, you judgmental person, you," Simon returned leaning back against the island in the kitchen as I bolted the door back. "It's about overcoming social prejudices and growing up as a person despite hardships."

"Whatever, but the point is, that whole book was leading up to a fight. Nothing we've done this summer is leading to a fight."

"Except the whole gang/mafia thing," Simon interrupted as we started upstairs for my room. "If that's not asking for a fight I don't know what is."

"Ha. You're hilarious," I hit him roughly on the shoulder. All my time training with Jace, Alec, and Izzy in the studio was paying off, Simon stumble away from me.

"Ow," he whined rubbing the assaulted arm gingerly, "Fame changed you, you're mean."

"I've always been mean," I answered, opening my bedroom door. "You're just not as use to it anymore."

"I'm used to it," Simon pouted falling on my bed. "Oh, a letter."

"A letter? Who writes letters anymore?" I took the letter from Simon and ripped it open.

* * *

 _Dearest Clarissa,_

 _I congratulate you on finding the golden chalice that your mother took from me before your birth. Jocelyn has always been creative and crafty, two traits that drew me to her in our youth. That you were able to follow her clues and find her hiding place speaks volumes on your abilities and potential._

 _I was disappointed to learn that you would not release the chalice to Samuel Blackwell and Emil Pangborn. They are trusted friends, who would have ensured the safe return of Jocelyn to you. Though it is my hope that your mother will stay by my side, and that you will join us._

 _It has come to my attention that you have befriended the Lightwood children. I must advise against it. The Lightwoods are not to be trusted, they are turn-coats. If you are anything like your mother, and I know you are, I'm certain you will understand the reference._

 _Moving on to the reason for this correspondence. For the past two months I have sent you a photograph of your mother and the daily paper, a proof of life. Last week you did not receive that assurance due to the fact that Jocelyn has fallen into a coma. Do not worry, my doctors assure me that she is fine._

 _I will release her to you in exchange for the chalice, the mirror, and weapon that were hidden away together. Should you agree to my terms; you will meet me at Renwick's Hospital with my possessions Friday night._

 _If not, then it will be war._

 _Think carefully on this Clarissa. The Clave is not prepared for war. The Nephilim are not prepared for war. And the Lightwoods will not protect you, nor will Hodge. All of the afore mentioned parties are interested solely in self-preservation._

 _I hope to see you Friday evening._

 _Your father,_

 _Valentine Morgenstern_


	26. Chapter 26

"Meet him where?" Jace's brow arched as he looked at me and the letter in my hand.

"Renwick's," I answered looking at the letter again to make sure I had his meeting place correct, even if there wasn't a meeting time.

"What's Renwick's?" Simon asked looking over my shoulder at the letter. He had read it while we were still in my room. Like me, he was having a hard time wrapping his head around it. Valentine, my father wanting to meet at some obscure place for an exchange, that wasn't actually an exchange since my mother was in a coma somewhere in Valentine's care.

"It's an old hospital," Alec answered. Dependable Alec, knowing what this obscure place was.

"A smallpox hospital," Izzy added helpfully. I was a little surprised that she knew that, it wasn't the type of information I expected to come from Izzy. Jace maybe, but not Izzy.

"Where's Renwick's?" Simon looked at the Lightwoods, who seemed to have some grasp of this place.

"It doesn't matter," Jace answered. I couldn't tell if that meant he knew or not. It was possible he wouldn't say because he had no intention on going. It was also possible he was just being difficult, like always.

"It's been closed for forever," Izzy rolled her eyes. Naturally a smallpox hospital would have been shut down. No one had smallpox anymore. And if they did, a regular hospital was equipped to handle it.

"A hundred years isn't forever," Alec shook his head, clearly deciding that wasn't a fight worth having with his sister. "It's condemned," Alec continued, "and owed by a dead man."

"Wouldn't that make it Clary's?" Simon asked, his brow furrowed in confused concentration.

"Wrong dead man," Jace scoffed at Simon's question.

"Shut up, Stephen."

"Who's Stephen?" Izzy's brow arched looking at Magnus, who had somehow managed to insert himself in our private meeting. I was honestly still trying to figure out how he knew about the letter from Valentine, though not how he wormed his way into the meeting. And why he cared so much about the letter.

"I have to get my mom back," I knew I sounded like a broken record. I was starting to annoying myself, so I could only imagine how annoyed everyone else was with me. But it was true, I had to save my mom.

"You can't go to an abandoned, condemned hospital," Simon insisted.

"You can't give Valentine the cup!" Alec and Jace shouted at the same time, Alec being marginally louder than Jace. They glared at one another across the table. It was becoming rare that they agreed on anything. It was making everything tense around the Lightwood House.

"This isn't a game, Jace," Alec's jaw was set as he growled at Jace. "We can't give Valentine the cup. Not if the Clave wants it."

"The Clave only wants it because Valentine wants it," Jace countered, lacking any real argument. Jace had lacked a real argument for a long time, but he was still against the pointless rules set by the Clave. "And if they only want it for that reason, they don't deserve it."

"No one deserves it if it's just to be petty," Izzy flipped her hair over her shoulder looking between Jace and Alec. "If Valentine only want it because Jocelyn took it, by Jace's argument we shouldn't give it to him. And if the Clave wants it just because Valentine wants it, they shouldn't get it either."

"But why didn't Ms. Fray want Valentine to have it?" Simon looked directly at me, as if I would know why my mother didn't want my long-lost, supposedly dead father to have this stupid cup. If I thought I knew anything about my mom, it had all been blown apart at the beginning of the summer.

"It's worth a lot of money," Magnus added helpfully. "Valentine could want it to sell on the Black Market so he has the money to start a new racket."

"That's not how racket's work," Alec sighed.

"He needs muscle to cause the trouble," Izzy shrugged looking her brother in the eye. If he was going to listen to anyone, we all knew it was Izzy.

"He already has the muscle, have you not met Pangborn and Blackwell?" Alec asked, clearly thinking he had stopped that train of thought.

"Intimately," Jace exhaled backing down from his argument with Alec. "But Magnus makes a good point. If the cup is worth something, he could just want to sell it."

"If he just wanted money, he could force my mom to help him. She's loaded," I had received reports about the many accounts my mom had hidden. Mafia hits paid well to the hitman. And those funds had been sitting in savings accounts for sixteen years, gathering interest.

"So it's not money," Simon sighed, drumming his fingers on the table. "Then why does he want it?"

"I thought we were discussing why Jocelyn doesn't want Valentine to have the stupid cup," Izzy frowned at Simon. "That is what we were discussing, right?" she asked the table.

"It all comes back to the same thing though, why Valentine shouldn't have the stupid cup," Jace stopped the side banter quickly. He wanted to get the conversation over with so that we could do something. What we were going to do was still unknown, but Jace needed to be doing something.

"I thought you just wanted to keep it away from the Clave?" Magnus looked suspiciously at Jace.

"The Clave doesn't need it either," they were right, all of them. The Clave wanted it so Valentine couldn't have it. For whatever reason the cup was worth a significant sum of money, which was a good reason to keep it away from Valentine. And since the cup was worth something, who was to say the Clave would sell it off, allowing it back in Valentine's clutches; since to the Clave, Valentine was a Deadman.

But Valentine wanted this cup in exchange for my mom. And as annoying as she had been my entire life, she was still my mother. She had raised me on her own, she had always tried her best, I couldn't fault her for that. And now I knew why she had been so strict, for my protection. I couldn't hate her for that. And I couldn't just leave her in his clutches, to do who knew what to her.

"Valentine doesn't need it, and neither does the Clave," I continued looking everyone in the eye as I spoke. "My mom doesn't need to suffer because of it, and neither do I.

"Then what are you suggesting?"

I looked over at Simon. My oldest and closest friend. He would agree to this; he would do anything for me.

He nodded to me, knowing what I was thinking as I thought it.

"Phase two?"

"Phase two," I nodded, looking around to the others. "And we'll need help."

* * *

I hadn't been to Luke's since the day I overheard Luke's conversation with Pangborn and Blackwell. I hadn't wanted to go to Luke's since that day, I had felt betrayed by his words. It was like my whole world had crashed in on itself that day.

But in order to get my mom, to get back at Valentine, I needed help. I needed the help of someone who knew Valentine. Someone who knew my mother when she was a hitman for the Circle. Once again, I needed Luke.

I needed Luke to be the man he always told me he was. The man I could come to with my problems, the man who said he would help me. The man who helped raise me and wouldn't judge me on my horrible decision making skills. I needed my mom's best friend.

The house was still boarded up. But the back door was open, unlocked and everything. I took it as a sign that Luke was waiting for me, that he knew what I was planning on doing and wanted me to know that he was in. That's wishful thinking, but at that point I was running on fumes and banking on a Hail Mary play.

"Luke?"

"In here Clary," he spoke in a tired voice from the darkness of his kitchen. "I've been expecting you."

"You have?" I tried not to sound surprised, but I know I failed miserably.

"Of course I have," a turned on the light over the table, revealing a monstrous pile of pizza boxes, take-out containers, and fast-food bags. "You're predictable, Clary. You run for comfort items when things get tough."

"I do not," I tried to sound offended by his claim. I was not predictable.

"Yes, you do," Luke leaned forward into the light. He had a scraggly beard in the making, his hair was wild and sticking out with several cow-licks, and his clothes were stained with grease from the various foods from the containers littering his normally neat kitchen. "You've always run for comfortable places. Your room, your sketch pads, my store, Simon's; always," he offered a grim half smile, thinking back on my actions of the past. He did know me, really _knew_ me, and that could cause a problem if Luke was not on my side.

"I didn't come here to fight with you Luke," I couldn't deny his accusations, he was right. Luke knew me well.

"I told you to stay away," Luke countered instantly, standing up. "They've been watching me. They think I don't give a damn about you or your mother."

"They knew about me, Luke. It's all been for nothing," he couldn't turn me away like he had at the beginning of the summer. I knew things, I had learned, and I wasn't afraid of the Circle. It had hurt before, and this was just reopening the almost healed wounds. But I had to have Luke back, in some manner, I needed the father-like figure he had always presented himself as.

"Has it?" Luke grinned darkly at me. "Has it really been for nothing? If I hadn't torched your home, the police wouldn't have been involved in this, not like they were. If I hadn't detained Pangborn and Blackwell for three goddamn days, what do you think would have happened to you?"

I swallowed, knowing exactly what would have happened if those things had not occurred. I might well have been dead, or locked up like my mother.

"If I hadn't convinced Hodge to offer you shelter, what do you think would have happened to Simon's family? To you?" Luke growled at me, forcing me to see his side. Forcing me to accept that he had acted in my best interests.

But I didn't want to. I didn't want to see his side of this. I wanted to stew in the hatred that he had betrayed me.

"Simon was drafted into the Vampire Clan because we were trying to find answers," I didn't really want to hear how Luke had helped me. I didn't need to know how being a jerk had helped me out. It just made me feel sick.

I had hated him. I had hated the only person who had really had my back during all of this. I couldn't see his side because that would make me hate myself.

"And I was taken in by the Wolf Pack," Luke held up his arm, where there was a tattoo of the Wolf Pack's mark, a smeared paw print. "I couldn't get word about you otherwise," he sighed, looking down at the tattoo and deflating. "And I had to know. I had to make sure you were still safe."

"I thought you were Nephilim," I whispered.

Luke laughed, deeply in his throat, and threw his head back. "Me? Nephilim?" he shook his head. "I was a turncoat, Clary. The Clave want's nothing to do with me. The Circle only wanted me to get them the cup. If I can't do that, they have no use for me."

"But the Wolves don't?"

"I'm the Alpha, they do what I tell them too," Luke answered, his face falling back to the grave demeanor he had worn when I entered. "And if I tell them to attack the Circle, they will."

"Even if they'll lose the fight? Possibly die?"

Luke gave a malicious smile, his face shadowed as he leaned back from the light. "I've earned their respect. They'd die for me," he sounded certain.

"And what do you want, Luke?" I swallowed hard, fearing that I might have made a mistake in coming to see Luke. He could have been lying all this time, stalling while waiting for Valentine, or the Clave to show up. It could all just be a ruse to get the cup for himself, become a powerful piece in the game once again.

"I've killed for Jocelyn," he answered. For the first time I noticed that there was more than garbage on the table. There were weapons and ammunition laid to one side, kept pain-staking clear of the debris. "I've killed for Valentine too." He was looking at the weaponry, his head tilting to one side slowly.

"Would you kill for me?" my words nearly caught in my throat. Would he kill for me? Would he still help me? Was I in anyway important to him?

"It would be my genuine pleasure," Luke gave a wolfish grin, half of his face shaded and dark. My body relaxed, I released the breath I hadn't realized I had been holding. He was on my side, at least for the time being. I had an alley, one who commanded more respect that Alec, Jace, and Izzy.

This Luke was not the man I had grown up with. But I was okay with that. I had realized, this Luke was the one I needed. I needed a Werewolf.


	27. Chapter 27

As it turns out, no one really likes the Clave. The Werewolves would gladly strike against them. The Vampires were practically tripping over themselves to be the first out the door and on the way to Renwick's. The Fey were even considering joining us, which according to Luke was the closest they ever came to committing to something.

The only uncertainty we had to deal with were Warlocks. They didn't answer to anyone, and they generally don't pick sides. It makes them a potential hazard. One I was in no way prepared to handle.

Magnus, however, was prepared to deal with them. As High Warlock, he has a little pull with the others. And if they refused to help him… Well, let's just say it ended badly for the guy going against his boss. The news reporters had a lot to say about the sudden increase in gang related deaths at the end of that summer, and all of them were known Warlocks.

So everyone with a grudge against the Clave was in for the strike against the Circle just so that they could annoying the Clave. Honestly, these are my kind of people. I mean they were willing to fight a mafia family just to tick off another one.

Bad news; yes, there is bad news here. They also don't like each other. Originally I thought this would be one of those, "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," thing. Long story short, "my enemy is still my enemy and not to be trusted as I used them to take out our common enemy."

What should have taken just a few short hours to plan and get rolling ended up taking the better part of two days. Two days of yelling, swearing, and name-calling, three wrestling matches, four games of Russian Roulette on a dare, six rounds of fisty-cuffs, two full-blown rumbles (much to Simon's pleasure and dismay), and an arm-wrestling competition (which Jace won). I had a permanent migraine after listening to them argue for those two days, it's possible I still have a residual headache from that migraine.

It was finally Alec who found the diplomatic solution to the many issues keeping us from moving forward. He basically took control of everything. Jace is referring it to "the single coolest thing Alec has ever done." And I have a new-found respect for him.

The swashbuckling privateers of old had a convenient term coined for what Alec did. They called in a mutiny, and it's still a widely-used phrase in the world. Another useful term for what Alec did is a Coup d'état, that's French and basically means a sudden seizure of power.

With Simon's help (I know I was shocked too) Alec managed to get the Vampire's to shut up long enough to hear out Magnus' plan, which was actually Luke's plan that he had formulated with Jace's help. Since it was Luke's plan the Werewolves were in. Magnus also assured us that the Warlocks were in. And our little sect of the Nephilim was defiantly in, even though we were acting outside of Clave Law.

Finally, we were ready to move forward, only to hit another snag in the impossibly long road we were trying to travel.

"Renwick's is privately owned, we can't all just go busting through the front doors," Simon had a wiki page about Renwick's pulled up on Magnus' expensive laptop. "They'll call the cops on us."

"Or just handle us themselves," Alec added helpfully. "They're a Mafia Family, they won't call the cops, they'll just off us themselves."

"That's a pleasant thought," I muttered reading the wiki page over Simon's shoulder. "It's owned by Valentine Morgenstern, or it was. The state took it over when Valentine was incarcerated, they still have it."

"So it's just another run down building no one gives a damn about," Izzy shrugged from where she was sitting across the table from Simon. "It should be easy." Over the summer we had become very skilled at entering buildings without notice. We had been in cooperate offices, banks, government buildings, and properties owned by members of Downworld; apart from the Downworlders, no one knew we had been there.

"It's maintained by the state," Simon protested, still reading. "This says it's owned by Valentine's heir; it'll go to them once they turn eighteen. Sucks to be them, they'll owe millions in back taxes," he cracked a crooked grin at the screen, clearly thinking the same thing as everyone else: I would owe the millions in back taxes.

"Valentine's heir?" Jace grabbed the computer from Simon, pulling it across the table toward him.

"That be Clary." Simon answered.

Who else would Valentine choose? One of the Family members maybe. But a man like Valentine would have chosen family. Or if he didn't specify then it would go to the first born child. Since my brother was dead, it would go to me.

"No," Jace snipped at Simon, turning the computer back to point something out to Simon. "It says here that Valentine named some other kid his heir."

"What kid?" I asked leaning through Jace and Simon's squabble at the laptop to see what was on the page and stop the fight. "Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern?"

"Your dead brother?" Izzy's brow arched. "That would take it back to you."

"Whoa, hold on a minute," I grabbed the computer out of Jace and Simon's hands, scrolling quickly down the page.

There were a few pictures of Valentine on the page. Mainly his mug-shots, a few of the wedding to my mother, and some from his time at some pretentious boarding school he had attended with Alec and Izzy's parents, Jace's parents, and my mom and Luke. And one that had grabbed my attention.

"That's Jace." Alec was leaning over my shoulder; the closest Alec had ever stood to me when we weren't fighting. "That's a picture of Jace, with Valentine!"

It was. A picture of a young Jace with a Falcon perched on his arm, beaming proudly beside Valentine Morgenstern. It was an old picture, Jace couldn't have been any more than eight years old, with deeply tanned skin from playing outside, and missing a front tooth. Valentine looked about as pleased as he did in any of the other pictures I'd ever seen of him, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his expensive looking suit.

"Jace, why is there a picture of you and Valentine? He was supposed to be dead before you were even born." We were all looking at Jace, waiting for an explanation.

"That's my dad," Jace took the computer next, his eyes flying across the screen quickly, disbelief paling his face. "That's Michael Wayland, that's my dad."

"No," Magnus once again decided to add his opinion to the conversation, his comments were few and far between. He sauntered around the end of the table to look over Jace's shoulder at the laptop. "That is Valentine, I'd recognize that face anywhere."

"It can't be," Jace shook his head. "There has to be some kind of mistake."

I missed whatever was said next. I kind of started ignoring everything happening around me at that point. I was staring at Jace while he stared at the computer screen, willing everything to stop.

I was dating Jace. I was in a relationship with Jace. We were a happy couple, the kind that I normally hated. Jace was my boyfriend.

He couldn't be my brother. My mind was trying to process all the reasons that Jace couldn't be my brother. There had to be a sold reason that stopped this from being true. But nothing I could think of really stopped it.

Jace had been raised by his father, who was never really seen out in public. According to the internet, Michael became a recluse after his wife's death. They had lived in a nice estate away from people, with a small staff who cared for Jace and his father. There were few pictures of Michael, even before the death of Jace's mother.

Valentine was presumed dead. Everyone talked about how they didn't really think it was Valentine's body the cops pulled out of that fire. The Clave wanted to turn a blind eye to it, but none of the rest of Downworld believed it.

And my dead brother, the one that caused my mother to betray Valentine and the rest of the Circle… I had never heard more than he was killed. There was no final resting place for the body, no note of a cremation, nothing.

Who was to say that Valentine didn't stage the death of his son, his own death, and then vanish into the shadows to raise the boy? Who was to say that Valentine didn't assume the identity of another Circle member, one who might have died in the Uprising? What proof was there really that Jace wasn't my brother?

Very little. Very, very little. And nothing was coming forward to disprove it.

Jace finally looked away from the computer. He looked at me, and I felt my stomach drop. He was my brother.

Jace opened his mouth, he was going to say something, but he changed his mind. He shook his head roughly and turned his attention back to the laptop. I swallowed hard, and back away from the table.

He was my brother.

My brother wasn't dead. My mother had betrayed Valentine for nothing. My brother was alive.

And I was dating him.


	28. Chapter 28

"So, he is your brother?"

I groaned, cradling my head in my hands.

"Clary?"

"Can we stop talking about it?" I asked, staring intently at the floor between my feet. Maybe if I just ignored it, it would go away. Maybe if I just stopped talking about it, it would stop being a real thing.

"I'm just trying to make sure I didn't miss anything here." Simon responded simply, a common reply between the two of us. Especially since school had let out for the summer. It seemed like nothing was simple anymore, and everything required multiple explanations.

"This isn't changing the subject," it was starting to wear on my nerves, these questions and the circle talk. Why couldn't he just drop it? For once why couldn't Simon have just accepted something weird happened and ignored it with me.

"Is it weird, having a famous brother?" Simon continued, ignoring my pleas for a change in topic. He was as determined to keep talking about it as I was to stop.

"Simon," I sighed, slowly lifting my head up so that I could look at him. He was sprawled out on my bed in the Lightwood House, pretending to read through a magazine. He had been like that since I left the planning meeting for the raid on Renwick's, two days previously. "I am asking nicely."

"I was just wondering if you like, had found something that disproved the claim? If you'd talked to someone?"

"Like who?" I snapped. "Mom? She's pretty much the only person who could disprove anything. And last I checked, Valentine had her locked away and somehow put her in a coma."

I shouldn't have snapped at Simon. I knew I shouldn't have, but I couldn't help it. I needed to vent, and he was conveniently there. Plus, he wouldn't really get mad at me.

But that still didn't give me a reason to snap. Simon was my friend; he was trying to help. In some odd, very Simon-like way, he was trying to help me. I knew that.

But I was stressed out. I was stressed, I was annoyed, and Simon was a readily available target. And I knew he would take it philosophically, he always had in the past.

Simon sat in silence for a few minutes, staring at the open magazine. I didn't look at him, and he didn't look at me. After what felt like forever, he sighed and I heard the pages fluttering as the magazine closed.

"I—uh, I have to go. I need to talk to Raphael. Vampire stuff," I heard the mattress creak as he adjusted on it, getting up to leave.

"Simon," I sighed again, all my anger deflating quickly at the prospect of losing Simon. "I didn't mean it," I looked up, pleading with my eyes for him to stay.

"I—I have to go," he forced his feet into his shoes, staring intently at the ground. "I'll text you later."

"Simon," I forced myself up out of the chair, trying to block Simon's way out of the room. At one point in our lives that would have stopped him. I was tiny, even compared to Simon. But he had always stopped for me.

He had buffed up since joining the Vampires. Before he had been a scrawny-little nerd, now he was still scrawny but he had toned up, he had strength. Simon, who would never have forcibly moved me before, pushed me aside easily.

"Simon," I rushed out of the room just in time to hear Simon storming down the steps of the main staircase. "Simon!" called after him, running to the lean over the banister.

He slammed the door as he left the house.

* * *

"Have you seen Jace?"

Why would anyone ask me if I had seen Jace? Because we lived in the same house? Because we were siblings? Because until early that week we had basically been inseparable? Probably.

But I hadn't seen Jace in days. I hadn't seen anyone in days because I had been at the Hotel Dumort trying to talk to Simon. I hadn't seen Simon since the day he left the Lightwood house, mad at me because I deserved it.

"No," I was still in the entryway, debating if I wanted to take off my shoes or just wear them up to my room. My bag was still thrown over my shoulder, the light jacket I had taken with me in case it rained wrapped around the strap. I debated just dropping that there too as I looked up at Izzy on the stairs. "Have you seen Simon lately?"

"He told me to tell you 'no.'" Izzy answered, at least she was honest about it. "I don't see what you two are fighting about."

No, she wouldn't. It was a stupid argument that had been blown out of proportion. It was something she and Alec might have done, but they were too perfect to fight like me and Simon.

"It's complicated," I kicked off my shoes but decided to keep my bag with me. "Why do you need Jace, anyway? He's been in the studio for the last three days."

I knew that because secretly I cared. I knew that because I wanted to go to him and have a nice moment, like the kind we had before. I knew that because I still cared about him as more than just a brother.

"He's not there," Izzy sighed, descending the steps from the second floor as I started up them. "He's not in the studio, he's not in the music room, the class room, the library/office, or his room."

I sighed, trying to think of another place Jace could be. Izzy had obviously checked all of his favorite places in the house. "Maybe he went to Taki's," I offered. "He does love that place."

"He's not," the front door opened, revealing Alec. "I checked his hangouts, he's not there."

"He has to be somewhere," I turned to face Alec, a bit of panic swelling in my chest. "Maybe he's doing something for the Clave."

"I would know," Alec was technically in charge of our little sect of the Clave. All their orders came to Alec, who them grumbled and complained about it while we did whatever the Clave wanted. They wouldn't have set an assignment to just Jace, especially since someone let it slip that he was Valentine's supposedly dead son.

"He has to be somewhere," Izzy snorted.

"I know that," she replied with a lot of snark. "That's the problem."

"I'll try calling him again," Alec was coming up the stairs behind me. Why he needed to come upstairs to call Jace was beyond me, but I had basically given up on understanding Alec.

He pulled his phone out as he came to a stop behind me on the stairs. I could hear it ringing as we waited for Jace to pick up. Jace always answered when Alec called him. He always answered when Izzy called him.

"Voicemail," Izzy visibly deflated at the comment, her shoulders slumping.

"I'll call him," I pulled my phone out. He might be mad at Alec about something, it was rare but it did happen. He had always answered for me, I hadn't done anything to piss him off.

"What?"

"Thank god," Izzy sighed in relief when Jace answered after the first ring.

"What the hell, Jace?" Alec shouted the same time I spoke.

"Where are you?"

"Out," he gave what I believe is a very good impression of an annoyed older brother. I wanted to strangle him through the phone.

"Jace," I snipped.

"What do you want Clary?"

"To know where you are," I pushed past Alec to go back down to the first floor. I could barely hear Jace over Izzy and Alec bickering and trying to talk to Jace while I was trying to talk to him. "Izzy said she hasn't seen you in days."

"I saw Izzy last night," I could hear the ghost of a smile in his voice.

"Where are you? Seriously."

Jace had never been evasive with me. He had always just said what he was thinking, what he wanted. This was a new side to Jace, one I wasn't a fan of.

"I'm just out Clary," he said again.

"Is something wrong?"

"You bet something's wrong!" Alec shouted storming down the steps with Izzy hot on his heels. "What the hell Jace, we're brothers! Brothers! And you answer her call, but let mine go to voice mail?!"

"No, nothing's wrong." Jace didn't sound like everything was fine.

"Jace," I started.

"I have to go. I'll see you soon."

He hung up on me.

When I called him back, Jace rejected my call. He let Izzy's call go to voicemail. And when Alec called him again, he let that go to voicemail too.


	29. Chapter 29

"If we called Hodge, he could track Jace's phone."

"I'm not setting Hodge on Jace," Alec answered gruffly, glaring angrily at his sister. "If we call Hodge, he'll call mom and dad. And when he calls mom and dad, they will come home, and then we'll have to answer for everything we've done this summer."

"He could be in trouble." Izzy was insistent, I had to give her that. They had been fighting about how to figure out where Jace went for almost an entire hour. Clearly, they hadn't gotten anywhere with it.

"He would have told us if he was in trouble," Alec was getting angrier by the comment from Izzy. He was getting louder, his responses shorter.

"Unless he went out looking for it," I sighed from where I was watching Alec pace the room. He paced when he was worried, and Jace always made him worried.

"Nobody asked you," Alec turned on me faster than I could keep pace with. He hadn't listened to me any other time I said something since Jace answered my call and not his.

"Sorry," I held my hands up to show I was unarmed and finished fighting him about it. "But I'm just saying."

"No one asked you," it was Izzy's turn to shout out me. Clearly I wasn't high on their approval ratings since the revelation about Jace being my brother. In my opinion it should have made me more likable to them. But they were Jace's friends, I was the kid sister trying to tag-a-long.

"I get you two are pissed at me, I obviously did something wrong here. But I want to find Jace, just like the two of you."

"Then do something useful," Alec snapped.

"Like calling Hodge," Izzy shouted, aiming the suggestion fully at Alec. "Hodge will be able to help."

"I'm not calling Hodge!"

"Then I will," Izzy already had her phone in her hand, she probably already had Hodge's number pulled up too.

"You won't," Alec passed by Izzy as he paced the room, and snatched her phone from her hand. "We're not involving Hodge. We're not involving mom and dad. I'm not going down because of her father."

"He's Jace's father too!" I shouted, outraged that I was being blamed for something I could not possibly have control off. "Valentine isn't just my father, and I'm not the one who ran off when I found out, am I?"

I hadn't run at any point during the summer. I hadn't run away when the house burned, I hadn't run off when Luke betrayed me. I hadn't run off when my mother turned up alive as a hostage. I hadn't run from any of the horrible things that I had happened to me since school had let out for the summer.

Jace had disappeared. The minute something seemed to be falling outside of what he wanted, Jace vanished. He vanished and ignored our calls and texts.

And it wasn't my fault that we had the same parents. It wasn't my fault that Valentine was psycho, killed people and pretended to be someone else. It wasn't my fault that Jace and I had been raised in lies and deceit.

"He's not talking to me anymore either. I don't know where he went, and I'm just as worried as the two of you." Alec snorted. "What?"

"Nothing," Alec answered stopping to glare at me.

"So I haven't known him as long as you and Izzy. So what? He's still my family, and I'm concerned about him!"

"You don't even know him," Izzy arched one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows in my direction.

"Clearly you don't either!" They wanted to blame all this on me. They wanted to pin his leaving on me, blame their inability to find Jace on me. I might not have known where he went, but they were just as clueless as I was. "Stop blaming me for all of this. Stop hating me, and get over it. We have more important things to deal with."

"We don't hate you," Izzy didn't sound very convincing, but I didn't have time to waste on that.

"You have a funny way of show it," I pushed myself out of the chair I was sitting in and started for the door. "I'm going to go find Jace, because he's my brother and I'm concerned." I cast a glare at Alec and Izzy before leaving the living room and slamming the door behind me.

"Where are you? And 'out' isn't an answer!" I was too angry to be surprised that he had answered my call. We had been calling him hourly, maybe a little more frequently, for most of the day and had left dozens of voicemails for him. He hadn't responded, he hadn't answered, until then.

He laughed, the same laugh he had used when we first starting talking on the phone. It was only a few weeks before, but at that moment it felt like years had spanned between the end of school and that night. I was too angry to take solace in that chuckle, knowing that was Jace's intention.

"God, Jace! We're freaking out here!" I snapped when he still didn't give me an acceptable answer.

"I went to Renwick's."

"You did what!" I shouted in the phone, stopping dead in my tracks on the sidewalk, people stared at me. Even in the City, shouting like that is noted, especially in the nicer neighborhoods.

"I went to Rewick's to see if Valentine was my father."

"Are you kidding me?" he didn't answer. Of course he wasn't kidding, he had been on radio silence because he was spying on a Mafia Boss. "Tell me you're joking."

"Clary," he sighed, admitting that he had done the opposite of what any of us wanted him to do.

"Do you have any idea—where are you now?" I shouted into the phone.

"Behind you," I spun around so fast I hit Jace with my bag. I wish he had been closer, I could have caused a bit more damage. He smiled, like it was a joke or an accident. I charged him, fully enraged.

"Are," I hit his shoulder, "you," I slapped his shoulder, "insane?" I slapped him in the face, just hard enough to leave a red hand print. "Izzy's about to call Hodge! Alec's on the war path, against me, by the way. And you did the most stupid," I didn't have words to express how angry I was at him. There aren't words to describe how angry I was at him.

"You don't understand," he tried to explain, that half smirk still showing around my handprint. I wasn't listening.

"I understand perfectly!" I shouted at him. "You did exactly what you wanted to do! You didn't care what it would cause. You didn't care who it would hurt, or how it would hurt us!"

"It's not," Jace tried to stop my shouted tirade, but I wasn't having any of that.

"They're worried about you! They're going crazy because you won't answer their calls, or return their texts! I'm—I was worried, a nervous wreck—and you just," I went to slap him again, but that time he caught my hand.

"Clary, it's not what you think. This has all just been a big misunderstanding."

"Let go of me."

"Just listen to me," I ripped my hand free of Jace's grip and back up a step.

"No, you listen!" I snapped at him.

"You two should probably take this off the street," the cool voice I recognized from the phone calls was entirely too close for comfort.

Valentine was there, with Jace. The monster who had destroyed my life was there, with Jace. And he was acting like this was no big deal, like I shouldn't hate him. Like he wasn't the cause of my life crumbling around me.

"Jonathan, please." It was a command, and it seemed that Jace was going to obey. He turned to face me, his mouth opening to suggest that we go somewhere else.

I never gave him the chance. I started forward, sliding around Jace. I didn't care that I was five-foot-nothing and Valentine was a towering giant like Jace. I didn't care that Valentine was a Mafia Boss and I was a little nobody. At that moment, all I wanted was to hit him.

Jace knew me a little too well, he caught me as I lunged toward Valentine, standing a few feet behind Jace. He was wearing a trench coat and fedora, trying to look inconspicuous as he stood in there totally exposed. I growled at Valentine, and at Jace for stopping me from attacking Valentine.

"There, there, Clarissa," Valentine smiled grimly under the shadow of his fedora. "Let's not cause a scene."


	30. Chapter 30

Causing a scene is exactly what I wanted to do. Valentine was there, in the open. The only thing stopping anyone from doing anything about it was a severe lack of knowledge, and I was ready to let everyone within three city-blocks know that Valentine was there.

The only thing stopping me, was Jace.

"Come on Clary," he still had a firm hold on me. "It's not like you think. He just wants to talk."

"Then he can talk to the police," I snapped, trying to free myself of Jace's grip.

"He wants to talk to you."

I frowned at Jace. The boy who had spent the whole summer doing what he wanted, regardless of consequences, was doing what someone else told him to do. The boy who had no regard for any adult like figure in his life, was obeying the commands of a Mafia Boss. And ignoring my pleas in the process.

"Then he can talk to me at the police station."

"I'm afraid that just won't work," Valentine stepped forward, the grim smile spreading a little as he did. "All I need, from you, is the cup. Then your mother will be freed, and you can go back to the blissful ignorance you once enjoyed."

"You told me something happened to my mother," I spat at Valentine. He had said she was in a coma. For all I knew she was dead. For all anyone knew she had been dead the whole time, with photoshopped newspapers in the picture. "You said she was in a coma."

"She is, and under the care of my best physicians." He said it so smoothly, like he had rehearsed it, like he had said it hundreds of times before. "And after our little chat, you will give me the cup, and she will be delivered to the hospital of your choosing."

"I don't want to talk to you," I stopped struggling against Jace. "I never wanted to be part of this. My mother never wanted me to be part of this. And if you love her, you'd have taken her to hospital already! You wouldn't have done any of this!"

"There's no need to shout."

"There's plenty of reason to shout!" I was getting louder, but not fighting. "You're Valentine Morgenstern!"

"Clarissa."

"Clary!"

Jace and Valentine spoke at the same time. Jace looked panicked, his golden eyes widened as he looked around hoping we had somehow managed to be the only people within shouting distance. Valentine, however, just looked pissed. He took another step toward me and Jace, so he was hovering right over Jace's shoulder.

"You will stop that, or I will instill the discipline that you're mother clearly neglected to teach." He spoke in a low threatening voice. He meant it, and from the few childhood stories Jace had shared with me, I knew what that meant.

But I, like Jace, had a severe disregard for authority. I was not afraid of Valentine in the way that Jace was. I had not been raised by this man, I didn't even know him. I was more afraid of my mother, and her temper. I was afraid for my mother, and therefore not afraid of her captor's threats.

"She didn't neglect anything." It was a lie, but it didn't matter.

I ripped myself free of Jace's grip. I backed up quickly, distancing myself from Jace and Valentine, glaring at the both of them. Jace moved to follow, but Valentine took his shoulder, holding him back.

"You're not going to win this fight," I challenged, hoping I sounded a lot more confident that I felt.

"I already have," Valentine answered in a cool tone. "I have the Clave in my control, the Circle is a force to be reckoned with once again and in a few short hours the whole world will once again fear the name; my name. I have all of world at my fingertips, Clarissa, with or without your compliance in these matters."

"The Clave doesn't answer to you."

Valentine flashed his grim smile at me once more. "Don't they?"

As far as I knew, no. But there was so little I knew about it. There was so little I had learned in just a few months. How could I know for certain? I could I know for sure if he had control of the Council and Clave?

I didn't. I would just have to hope that I was right. And use the force of the rest of Downworld to straighten things out if I was wrong. But I really hoped that I was right.

"They don't," Jace surprised me by speaking against Valentine. He took a step forward, away from his father and turned back to face him. "The Clave doesn't answer to you, it never has. And it never will."

"Jonathan," there was a warning tone in Valentine's voice. "We're not causing a scene here."

He sounded like the high-society people in the movies or books, the ones who were displeased but couldn't openly express that because of appearances. Valentine was trying desperately to maintain some façade out there in that street; control? Perfection? He wanted things his way, and until Jace turned against him, it seemed he might have gotten it.

"No, we are causing a scene," Jace's hands clenched at his sides. "The Clave doesn't answer to you. And the Circle is no more a reckoning force than it was a year ago."

I was surprised that Jace was speaking against Valentine. It was only moments prior that he was ready to restrain me and take me wherever Valentine wanted to go for this little chat. I wasn't sure why Jace was talking against Valentine, I was pretty sure I was the blame, and I was alright with it.

I was in the dark about how to get away from Valentine, how to stop him, how to annoy him perfectly. Jace would have some clue as to how to do all of that. Valentine had raised Jace, so he would know exactly how to get under Valentine's skin.

"Jonathan," he said again, darker. It was a warning, one that clearly Valentine felt didn't need to be repeated.

"Clary has the cup. You can't do shit until you have it, because you're broke." Jace continued, his hands clenching tighter at his sides, his knuckles whitening.

"That is enough." He clipped each word off, growling at Jace.

"No, I don't think so, father. Would you kill us both? Then you'd never get the cup." That seemed like a bold claim. If Valentine had the Clave in his pocket, it would only be a matter of days before the cup was recovered from the Lightwood house and returned to him. And, shocker, I wasn't really ready to challenge Valentine to a "life or death" thing.

"I have other means to finance my endeavors," Valentine snarled at Jace. He was clearly not used to Jace having any form of disobedience.

"Then you don't really need the cup," I stepped around Jace to look fully upon Valentine. "It doesn't give you anything, people don't fear it. It's not cursed, it's not holy or some bullshit. And if you have money already it's completely useless."

Valentine laughed, head thrown back, full belly laugh. "You know so little of this world, Clarissa."

"You're wrong Clary," Jace whispered, never looking away from Valentine. "There's something about that cup."

"Jonathan is right, of course," Valentine was still laughing, his grin splitting his face. "That cup is very important in ways you don't understand."

"What? Like Indiana Jones stuff?" I snorted. There was nothing special about that cup except that it had managed to not be in a museum for so long. "I don't believe in that kind of thing. It's a hoax."

"Not that kind of special," Jace whispered again.

"Then what kind of special is it?" I breathed in response. If it wasn't some Indiana Jones artifact, then what was it? "What other special is there?"

"Sentiment?" Jace shrugged, just as confused about the conversation as I was. "He's not really sentimental though."

"Then why?" I asked aloud.

"Why don't you come with me, and we can discuss this." It was a command. Valentine had come for me, and he had no intention leaving without me. I shared a look with Jace.

He had been to Renwick's already. He had seen the place, so in theory, Jace would know a way out if things turned south. That might have been a lot to hope for, but it was the only thing good I could see in going to Renwick's with Valentine.

Very slowly, Jace shook his head. "No."

"Jonathan," Valentine said curtly.

"She's not going to Renwick's with you."

"I can make my own decisions!"

"You're not going with him to Renwick's. I won't let you."

I was a little mad, maybe a lot mad. He was telling me what to do, or trying to at least. I don't where he got off telling me that I couldn't go to Renwick's.

I didn't really want to go to Renwick's, but that was beside the point. I could have gone, if I wanted. Just like he had gone because he wanted to. He couldn't go off and do something that stupid, and then tell me I couldn't.

"Excuse you?"

"You heard me," Jace turned his head just far enough to look at me from the corner of his eye. "You are not going with him to Renwick's."

"Oh, but you can?" I scoffed, glaring at Jace.

"I went on recon," Jace answered instantly, like he had been anticipating that line of questioning. He was probably prepared to answer to Alec, that was a very Alec-like question.

"Bullshit." Jace was good at getting what he wanted, he was good at spinning any story to his favor, making him seem like less of a jerk. I didn't care how charming he was, he did want he wanted, like always. And I wasn't going to let him lie about it.

"Clarissa, language. That's not very becoming of a young lady."

I turned my glare at Valentine. "Suck it."

"Clary!" Jace yelled, tackling me to the ground.

"Jace! Get off!" I was too insulted by the tackle to care about why. He was also heavy, all muscle and toned—and my brother! "Get off me!"

"Please, shut up." Jace hissed in my ear. "For the love of God, shut up."

"Now, now, Jonathan," I inhaled sharply, I had been about to yell at Jace but stopped short. Valentine was right overtop of Jace, and subsequently me, his hand posed to strike. "I warned her, and you interfered."

"You're not taking her to Renwick's," Jace repeated, still shielding me from Valentine. "And you're not hitting her either."

"She's needs a lesson in respect," Valentine took hold of Jace's hair and hauled him to feet. "And seems you need a refresher course."

I glare at Valentine from where I was still sprawled on the ground. He would hit me? He would beat me to prove a point and/or discipline me? I could see why my mother left him, and turned him over to the feds.

Jace had lived with this man. Jace knew what he was capable of. And he had still jumped in front of me.

"It's no wonder my mother left you."

"You've gone too far."

"No, you have."


	31. Chapter 31

"Lucian," Valentine had the common sense not to turn his back on Jace. I would have thought he knew better than to leave his back exposed to Luke. But it seemed Luke was the more trust-worthy option. "This is a family matter. I'm afraid you have no business here."

"Clary is family," Luke answered gravely. "And so is Jace."

That caused Valentine to turn around. "She is my daughter, Lucian, and he is my son. These two are my children, by blood, and by every right solely mine. You have no affiliation with either of them." Valentine straightened as he looked at Luke. He was shorter than Luke, but Valentine still looked down on him. "Now leave, I have things to discuss with my children."

"You lost your rights to both of them, a long time ago," Luke growled.

It's a time like this, in movies, that a person in Luke's position would have pulled a gun, or snapped his fingers to summon a dozen goons to finish the fight for him. Luke didn't do that, he didn't reveal he had a weapon, or show us that he was smart enough to bring back-up to the fight. It seems stupid, coming to face against the most dangerous man in the world completely alone and unarmed; but Luke knew Valentine.

Luke was like Valentine. Proud, crazy, and capable. If Valentine fought fair, Luke would too. If Valentine pulled something, I had the feeling Luke would be able to handle it. He had once been Valentine's right hand, no one could possible know him better.

"Jace, take Clary and go back to the Lightwood House," Luke ordered us, never breaking eye contact with Valentine. "Call Agent Whitelaw, and tell him I'll have a gift for him."

"You can't beat me Lucian," Valentine laughed, a mad-man's maniacal bark of laughter. "You've never been able to fight."

"I never fought against you, Valentine," Luke responded, like that proved Valentine's claim invalid.

"Because you can't," Valentine wasn't afraid of Luke. Valentine was in control, had been in control. To him, Luke was a piece, like me and Jace, and our mother. And the pieces never turned against the game maker. "You were a shitty marksman, a valiant _punching bag_ , and a disgrace to everything the Circle stood for."

"The Circle stood for nothing," Luke growled, his fists clenching at his sides, the veins on his forehead popping up. "You were a bully then, and you're a bully now."

"And you've resorted to name calling?" Valentine gave another bark of laughter. "How the once entitled have fallen."

"You started this fight Valentine," Luke opened his hand, and flexed his fingers slowly. "You started this sixteen years ago, and I'm going to finish it now."

"Seems like a long time to hold a grudge." Valentine seemed happy that Luke had held that anger for so long, as if it proved he was right in some unresolved fight between the two of them from that life sixteen years before.

"Revenge is a dish best served cold," Luke flicked his eyes over to me and Jace. "Jace, take Clary and go."

"No, Jonathan. You and Clarissa will stay there. And once I've dealt with this disgrace to the Nephilim, we will continue our conversation." Valentine said calmly. He was in every way the opposite of Luke standing there.

I shared a look with Jace. I wanted nothing else to do with the conversation we had been sharing with Valentine. Jace clearly was finished with it too. But if we ran off, if we left Luke behind, there was no telling what would happen to him.

Jace could help Luke, Jace was a trained fighter. I doubted Jace could take Valentine out on his own, Valentine would have a weapon somewhere, and I was almost positive that Jace was unarmed. But if Jace and Luke both fought Valentine, maybe they could make it until I could get Special Agent Whitelaw there with the FBI.

But Jace would never let me go alone. Circle members could be anywhere, waiting to snatch me up and drag me off to Renwick's to await Valentine's return. Jace would hate himself if something happened to me because he had stayed to help Luke.

I would hate myself if we left Luke to the fight alone. I would hate Jace if we left Luke and something happened to him. Jace would probably hate himself for that too.

"We're not leaving him here to fight alone," I whispered to Jace.

"They're not part of this," Luke barked at Valentine, trying to spare us whatever Valentine might have planned.

But, unfortunately, we were part of it. We were the cause of the whole issue. Luke was going to fight Valentine because of me and Jace being there. Valentine was going to kill Luke because Luke was trying to help me and Jace. And this whole thing was happening because I went to find Jace myself, because Jace had gone to find Valentine by himself.

"I'm not letting them fight," Jace answered me quietly, his golden eyes narrowed as he watched Luke and Valentine.

"You can't fight them either," I protested.

"I won't harm them," Valentine smiled grimly at Luke. He wouldn't hurt us during the fight, but he had already shown he had no problem doing it when we were alone. "They are my children after all."

Luke lunged forward, his right hand coming up to slam into Valentine's face. Valentine moved forward barely a second after Luke, his right fist flying for Luke's face. Jace started after them, belatedly realizing that the fight was happening whether he wanted it to or not.

Luke and Valentine's blows landed in sync. Both men staggered back a step, wiping the assaulted cheeks with the backs of their hands as they did so. Valentine was bleeding, he cracked a vile smile seeing the red smear on his hand.

"It seems I may have under estimated your abilities," Valentine cracked his neck and knuckles, reappraising Luke for the next round of the fight.

"You never did give people enough credit," Luke spat blood out of his mouth. "You only ever saw value in yourself." They circled slowly, watching each other carefully.

"Few others are worth my time."

"Make time," Luke growled.

They attacked again.

Luke charged first again, his hands up to protect and attack. He landed three quick jabs on Valentine's chest, sending him back a step. The Valentine kicked out, his shin connecting solidly with Luke's hip.

Luke limped back, favoring the leg, but far from finished with the fight. Valentine grinned, bringing his fists up. "Finished already, Lucian?"

"Hardly," Luke swung, never coming close to Valentine with his fist. He followed it closely with a kick, the heel of his boot leading the way toward Valentine's neck.

Valentine hadn't expected that. It was clear by the look on his face with Luke's boot hit him that Valentine had not expected the punch to be a feint attack. Luke pressed his advantage with another solid kick, that time to Valentine's face, sending him sprawling on the ground.

"Call Special Agent Whitelaw. Get them here, now." Luke flexed his hands again, looking down at Valentine. "I'm going to enjoy this."

On the ground, Valentine started laughing. He was spread eagle on the ground, blood running out of his nose and the corners of his mouth, and he was laughing. "That was good, Lucian. A valiant attempt."

Valentine came back up to his feet, bouncing up off the ground like a gymnast, and dusted himself off. "But I still stand by my earlier statement. You never were a fighter."

Luke smiled. A thin smile to rival one of Valentine's. "No, I wasn't a fighter, I was a bomber. Jocelyn was a sniper, and you were nothing."

"Are you going to blow us all up then?" Valentine laughed, wiping the blood from his face with the hem of his shirt. "What good is a bomber without a bomb?"

"What good is a Mafia Boss without his thugs?" Luke countered, pulling a pistol from the waist of his jeans. "What is a god to a non-believer?"

"A mob to a king? A king to a god? A god is nothing to the non-believers," Valentine sighed. "You always were a dreamer. Useless, but amusing to have around." Valentine pulled a gun from the waist of his jeans, pointing it at me and Jace.

"You said you wouldn't hurt them," I could hear a trace of panic in Luke's voice, his hand dropped marginally. He didn't want us to get hurt, but he couldn't let Valentine leave with us either.

"And I won't," Valentine answered, his smile thinning out. "Throw your gun away, Lucian, and I'll put mine away. Neither of them have to get hurt."

"He won't shoot us," Jace stepped in front of me, planning on taking any bullet that was not shot at us. "He wants us to join him, he won't hurt us."

"He needs you alive, not unharmed," Luke corrected Jace, his knuckles whitening from where he held the gun too tightly. "What do you need them for Valentine? They're public figures, people will notice if they go missing."

I had never been more thankful that Jace was a celebrity. Luke was right. People would notice is Valentine took us. They would know if Valentine hurt us.

"They are the heirs to my kingdom," Valentine answered, as if it should have been obvious that he was just trying to give us a birthright.

"You're no king," Luke spat at him.

"Not yet," Valentine answered. "Now, throw the gun away Lucian, or young Clarissa here will spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair." He aimed the gun at the wall behind me and Jace, as if he could accurately predict the ricochet of the bullet and ensure that it would paralyze me.

"No!" Jace lunged at Valentine, at the same time that Luke did. Jace wrapped his arms around the arm Valentine held his gun with, Luke bulldozed into the two of them.

And all three of them plowed into me.

* * *

When I woke up in the hospital, I was alone. I could see two armed officers at the door of my room, I could see doctors running past the window. I was hooked up to a heart monitor, and my head was bandaged heavily.

There was nothing in the room to suggest I had been there for long. There was nothing there to suggest that Simon or anyone else had come to see me while I was there. I was in an empty hospital room, hooked to a monitor.

My stay in the hospital was short lived, a representative from Starkweather Talent Agencies came to pick me up once the doctors were sure I was fit to leave. I had suffered a mild head trauma, a few stitches and I was good to go.

When Jace and Luke attacked Valentine, and ran into me, I cracked my head on a wall. I had split it open, and gained a concussion. According to the doctor, I was the only one that had been in real medical danger. Jace had been cut up a little, but a few stitches and he was released the same day.

Neither Luke or Valentine had been there when the ambulance arrived to pick me and Jace up. No one had seen or heard from Luke since. He was probably sacred that the FBI would take him in on assault charges, or for connections with Valentine and the Circle. The FBI loved to pin things on known members, even if they had been removed from the Circle since Valentine "died" in the early 90's.

Once I was released, he came out of hiding. The Police and FBI tracked him down for statements. After that, they left him alone and he returned to his book shop.

I returned to the Lightwood's house. It was still the safest place for me. And it was the only place I had to go too.

When school started back in the fall, I didn't attend. Jace and the Lightwoods took me with them to Europe. Being part of the Nephilim made me important to the Circle, and the Clave. The Clave wanted to keep us close at hand, so we couldn't be swayed to join the Circle and turn against them. Not that we ever planned on doing that anyway.

I heard rumors that Simon never returned to school either. He became the second to Raphael and the New York Vampires. He had a price on his head form the Clave for disruption of everything they stood for. I didn't talk to him a lot, any communication we had was brief, barely past the pleasantries. But I always hoped that it was Simon every time my phone buzzed, the old Simon; my best friend.

Things with Jace were awkward. I wanted to be with him, to hang out with and get to know him. But he pushed me away. I still had feelings for him, I was in love with him.

Izzy said he was in love with me, and this had been a crushing blow. I couldn't help it though, not any more than Jace could. Izzy and Alec knew it, but they still chose sides. They didn't pick me.

I spent all of August and most of September at the Lightwood Estate somewhere in Europe. I met Robert and Maryse, who said I could stay only because it made them look good to the Clave. The only reason they didn't kick Jace to the curb was because it would look bad publicly; they could hardly disown the child they had adopted because his real father was a mass-murdering Mafia Boss. But they treated him with great caution and little trust. I was treated worse, after all, they didn't owe me anything.

At the end of September, I went back to New York, to stay with Luke. Things had more or less smoothed over by that point. The police had given up on finding the Circle, and decided they had jumped to conclusions at the beginning of the summer. The D.A., Mayor, and Police Chief all released statements, letting the public know that under no uncertain terms where the events of that summer related to the Mafia family known as the Circle, the acts were unrelated and the culprits had been taken into custody.

The treasures my mom had hidden in our house stayed with me. The Clave seemed content with the decision. My mother had kept them away from Valentine and safe for the better part of two decades. They had no real use for them and, if the need arose, they knew where to find them. I doubt I'll ever give them to the Clave, it's not something they need.

When I moved in with Luke he told me all about them, what they were, what they meant and why they were so important to the Clave and Valentine. They had all been special to the guy who had originally founded the Nephilim. The cup and the mirror had actually been the guy's, handed down through his family for years; they were worth a pretty penny because of how old they were. The knife had diamonds in the handle, and the blade was a super rare metal. All together the tree items were worth trillions of dollars.

Sometimes I talked to Luke about Downworld, about what might have happened if we had managed to unite all of Downworld to storm Valentine's base at Renwick's. It was all wishful thinking, we knew. We had asked for too much, too soon, from people who couldn't stand one another.

I still worked for the Clave, when they deemed it something Valentine's daughter couldn't corrupt. Occasionally I talked to Jace. Those conversations were only slightly better than the conversations with Simon, and that was only because he was my brother. I couldn't completely cut him out of my life, even though that was exactly what he wanted.

* * *

I was watching Luke's bookstore the morning that it happened. It wasn't another earth-shattering moment, but it was pretty significant. But I had learned that any moment could be earth-shattering, any moment could be significant, anything could change everything.

The bell on the door jingled, signaling a customer had entered the shop. I sighed, rolling my shoulders as I set down my sketch pad and charcoal pencil, ready to greet them. The desk was near the back of the shop, so it took a minute before I saw him.

He was around the same age as me, with pale blond hair and dark eyes. He looked down his nose, which was long and narrow, at me. A thin smile pulled at his lips as he looked me over.

"Can I help you?" I asked, getting a weird vibe from him.

"Probably," he answered boredly. "I'm here looking for my sister."

"You're looking in the wrong place," I answered. I was alone in the book shop. Not that I couldn't handle this guy, I was armed and I knew how to fight thanks to Jace and Izzy. "You should just go on home."

"No, I'm in the right place," he leaned forward on the counter of the desk, his smile growing marginally. "You're Valentine's daughter, right?"

I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously. Very few people referred to me as Valentine's daughter, and when they did it was always someone from Downworld. This guy didn't look like anyone I had met from Downworld, or with the Clave.

"What's it to you?" I asked darkly, slowly reaching for the gun stored beneath the counter top. I knew Luke would rather deal with gun shots and bullets holes than another crazed Downworlder on the loose.

"My name is Jonathan," he replied. "But everyone calls me Sebastian. I'm Valentine's son, his real son. And I'm going to burn down the world."


End file.
